——, 


A STUDY 


OF 


CHRISTIANITY AS ORGANIZED 


THIRD EDITION 


NASHVILLE, TENN. 
COKESBURY PRESS 
1928 


CopyRIGHT, 1910 
BY 
SmitH & LAMAR 


: 
- 


Se Ge eT go 


TO 
MY COMRADES IN CONFERENCE 
IN MEMORY OF FORTY-FOUR NOT UNEVENTFUL YEARS 
IN THE SERVICE OF OUR MASTER 
UNDER AN ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY 
HAPPILY ADAPTED TO THE CONDITIONS IN WHICH IT AROSE 
SINGULARLY SUCCESSFUL HITHERTO 
PROMISEFUL FOR THE FUTURE 
LIABLE OF NECESSITY TO ABUSE COMMENSURATE WITH 
ITS GREAT AGGRESSIVE FORCE 


(ii 


) 


The stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, when we behold them, 
delighteth the eye; but the foundation which beareth up the one, the root 
which ministereth unto the other, is in the bosom of the earth concealed; 
and if there be occasion at any time to search into it, such labor is then more 
necessary than pleasant, both to them that undertake it and for the lookers- 
on. In like manner, the use and benefit of good Laws all that live under 
them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first 
original causes from whence they have sprung be unknown, as to the great- 
est part of men they are.—Richard Hooker. 


Ideas make the world we live in—Helen Keller. 


(iv) 


PREFACE. 


CHRISTIANITY, as it becomes a common faith and experience, 
will draw people together into congregations, or churches. More- 
over, it will develop in these churches various offices of over- 
sight and ministration. Thus it organizes itself for doing the 
work of Christ in the world. 

Church organization, therefore, so far as it bears the name 
worthily, is not something apart from Christian faith and ex- 
perience. On the contrary, it is an outer form of the inner spir- 
itual life. Most truly speaking, it is Christianity as organized. 

In a study of Christianity, however, organization would not 
be generally chosen as its most attractive aspect. It has too much 
the appearance of legal mechanism. Also, it has provoked a 
great deal of discreditable controversy—in this respect standing 
by no means alone—and may seem to tend practically to division 
rather than unity in the Christian world. 

No wonder, then, that certain sincere minds should be dis- 
posed to pass by such a theme with a very moderate amount of 
attention. Yet in point of fact it is full-laden with interest and 
significance. If the reader find it otherwise, the fault will be the 
writer’s—or possibly his own. 

Not, indeed, that the structural forms of even so transcendent 
a truth as Christianity must needs be interesting for their own 
sake and in themselves. They are nothing in themselves; but as 
an expression of the movements of a great and abundant life 
within, they do possess the power of exciting perpetual interest. 
This, to be sure, is true of everything: the inner is the real. 
The letters are not the word: the thing seen is not the reality. 
Out of the horror of burning a live human body to a hideous 
cinder there may go forth a universal inspiration to that which 
is true and good; but all because of the truth of self-sacrifice 
which the murdered martyr embodies. What measure of interest 
would be awakened by a human face but for the invisible soul 
that appears in it? The “expression’”—the unseen self visual- 


(v) 


vi Preface 


ized—is what we value. And the forms of organization which 
the religion of Christ has taken, whether recent or historic, are 
no exception to the rule that the life is more than any outward 
structure that it builds. Back of them all may be felt the heart- 
beat of human ideas, energies, passions, conscience, aspirations. 
Their history, therefore, is easily susceptible of illustration, from 
beginning to end, with personal characteristics and incidents. 
Above all, there appears, by its proper tokens, though without 
violence to even the most perverse wills of men, the sovereign 
purpose of God in his Church’s life on earth. 

It is, then, the humanity back of every ecclesiastical question, 
with the Divine hand in the human struggle, that makes the 
story great. 

Now the organization of a local church, in this or that in- 
stance, may indeed appear quite truly as little more than mechan- 
ism. But so likewise may the utterance of prayers, the singing 
of hymns, the delivery of sermons, the offering of money, the 
administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in the Chris- 
tian congregation. Yet no one would declare this to be the 
proper character or design of these devotional observances. On 
the contrary, it is a sign of degeneration—they are losing their 
life. And the case is just the same with the forms of organiza- 
tion under which, together with certain forms of worship, a 
church of Jesus Christ would live its life and do its work in the 
world. They are simply untrue to their idea, unless alive. 

The present treatise is designedly expository. Its aim is to 
relate the facts as known, or supposed to be, with as near an ap- 
proach as possible to truth in explanation and criticism. I have 
hoped to set down a good deal in the way of fact and truth, with 
something of inference and something of suggestion. 

Argument, indeed, cannot be wholly avoided; and what may 
seem to be a polemic trend will here and there intrude. But 
whatever bias of judgment as to any particular organization may 
betray itself would plead to be charitably condemned as an un- 
conscious intellectual vice. Of course it may be none the less 
real on that account; for “who can understand his errors’ or 


Preface vil 


claim to be free from “secret faults?’ It is so easy for feeling 
and will to distort fact, minifying or magnifying, confusing 
segment and circle. Nevertheless one must recognize the obliga- 
tion, and may be permitted to profess the intention, at least, of 
speaking the whole unperverted truth in love. And as to contro- 
versy, it is worse than vanity (in both senses of this word) un- 
less it be purely for truth’s sake and love’s sake. 

The topical method of treatment has been chosen in prefer- 
ence to the chronological. In followiag this method I am aware 
of having incurred the danger of undue repetition. But this, I 
hope, has been guarded against, and the various topics permitted 
only to reappear without intruding. To touch the same fact or 
idea in different connections at different times is indeed one of 
the best ways to make its acquaintance. 

From the introduction of the footnotes that cumber so many 
pages I would willingly have been excused. More than once 
have I felt inclined to throw aside all these digressions—‘“for 
what is a footnote but a digression?’ But the nature of the 
discussion pleaded for them with much show of reason; and so 
they remain. Let them serve, more or less satisfactorily, as au- 
thority for views presented in the text, as confirmatory (or con- 
tradictory) views, and as some indication of the literature of the 
subject. 

I am glad of this opportunity to acknowledge indebtedness to 
several honored scholars and church leaders for consenting to 
criticise my manuscript with reference to the history or the pres- 
ent organization of the churches which they respectively repre- 
sent—to Dean E. I. Bosworth, of Oberlin Theological Seminary ; 
President E. Y. Mullins, of the Southern Baptist Theological 
Seminary; Professor Williston Walker, of Yale University; 
Professor J. W. Richard, of the Lutheran Theological Seminary 
(Gettysburg) ; Professor W. N. Schwarze, of the Moravian 
Theological Seminary; the Rt. Rev. F. F. Reese, of Savannah, 
Ga.; Dr. W. L. Watkinson, ex-President of the Wesleyan Meth- 
odist Conference; the Rev. J. H. McNeilly, D.D., of Nashville, 
Tenn. ; and Professor Y. Tanaka, of the Kwansei Gakuin, Kobe, 


viii Preface 


Japan. The courteous kindness with which the requested cor- 
rections and suggestions were offered has made even my sense 
of obligation a pleasure. 

If the reader will call attention to any errors, whether of fact, 
inference, or emphasis, which I have not as yet been able to cor- 
rect, it will be a truly appreciated service. 

VANDERBILT University, April 23, 1910. 


CONTENTS. 


a Pace 
LATO DU CRORNT “48 OBB Globe SROCBO Oe De cots BEDE ae CUES SBE To otcr Eo OC orp XXiil 
Parr 
BROTHERHOOD. 
, i. 
Tue Uniryine TrutH: “ONE MAN IN CHRIST JESUS”..........0000000- 3 


Organization as Developed Out of Brotherhood. 

1. Christ as the Unifying Truth. His personality. The prophet- 
teacher, the holy one, the Lord of the conscience, the personal ideal, 
the Saviour. 

2. The Response of Love—in Emotion, Will, Service. 

3. But Is Not Self-Love a Common Motive of Church Membership? 
Yes, but self-love is even necessary to love for others. Yet the con- 
scious seeking of one’s own good decreases. 

4. Love Amid Its Antagonists. 


II. 


SoctaAL DEPENDENCE: ADMISSION INTO MEMBERSHIP...........eeeeceeeces 17 


1. Christianity a Social Religion. Contrast with pagan cults. Jesus’ 
recognition of the social need in religion. Sharing the new life. 

2. Social Dependence in Worship and in Work. 

3. The Church Idea in the Acts and the Epistles. A Christian life 
society. 

4. Original and Later Conditions of Membership. In apostolic times. 
In post-apostolic times. In medieval times. 

5. Conditions of Membership in Protestant Churches. 


III. 


SOCTAM DEPENDENCE S| DISCIPLINE : 4 Seis: \-0 «1s s\sjeleisise aclaie Seles ei dieleoalelerclny cle 31 


Significance of, Church Membership. 

1. Formative Discipline—Personal, Official. 

2. Corrective Discipline in the New Testament Period—Personal, 
Official. Jesus’ word as to “binding” and “loosing.” The case in the 
Corinthian church. Arbitration. 

3. Corrective Discipline in Post-Apostolic Times. Two distinct 
grades of excommunication. Relation of prophets, martyrs, bishops, to 
the restoration of the lapsed. The penitents’ stations. 

4. Corrective Discipline in Medieval Times. The confessional and 
penance. 

5. Indulgences. 


(ix) 


x Contents 


IV. 
V. PacE 
SoctaL DEPENDENCE: DISCIPLINE, ORGANIZED FELLOWSHIP.....-.+.++++-- 50 


Corporal Punishments for Religious Offenses. 

1. Discipline Emphasized in Protestant Reformation, and Why. 

2. Illustration Found in the Calvinian Discipline, in Independency, 
and in Methodism. May the class-meeting test of church member- 
ship be justified? 

3. Present-Day Laxity of Discipline. Need of administrative fidelity, 
wisdom, love. Certain embarrassing limitations. The personal the 
norm of the official. 

4. Positive Provision for Fellowship in the Church. Social sig- 
nificance of the Lord’s Supper, of the primitive love feast, of the 
modern class meeting. 

The Idea of Service in Fellowship. 


V. 


INDIVIDUALISM: PARISH, MONASTERY........-scceccnccsccccss oi chetadeveeeiers . 64 


Social Dependence Not Repression but Development of the Indi- 
vidual. 

1. Individualizing Effects of the Teaching and Personality of Jesus. 
Moral love as an element of personality. 

2. Repression of the Individual in the Early Church. Due to im- 
perialism and sacerdotalism. 

3. Formation of the Parish. Original and subsequent meanings of 
the word. Mechanical unification of the Church under the diocesan 
bishop. 

4. Rise and Growth of the Monastery. Its rise favored by the 
solidarity of the parish. Motives. 

5. Social Development of Monasticism. Wherein did the freedom 
of the monk consist? 

6. Regulation and Supervision of the Monastery. In the East—Basil 
the Great. In the West—Benedict. Were not the principles of free- 
dom and individualism violated? Sacraments and ordinations for the 
monastery. Relation of bishops and pope to the monastery. 

7. Monastic Learning and Missionary Zeal. Rise of the preaching 
friars. The highest monastic development of service. 

8. Decline of Monasticism. Its errors and evils. 

Monasteries of To-Day. 

VI. 
INDIVIDUALISM: THE PROTESTANT CONGREGATION......... 6 « oo ecladusteea aoe 


The Church Promoting or Invading Personality. 

1. The Reformation Protest against the Invasion of Personality. 
Representative character of Martin Luther’s experience. 

2. The Roman Catholic Reaction. Due to passivity and timidity. 
Annihilation of the individual in Jesuitism. 


Contents xi 
PacE 

3. False Security against the Dangers of Individualism—Refusing 
to Think. 

4. The Protestant Solution of the Problem of Social Dependence 
and Individualism. Its defects. The Puritan. Luther’s method com- 
pared with that of Descartes. 

5. Protestant Authority in Teaching, in Government. 


Résumé. 
Part IT. 
OFFICE. 
1 
OFFICERS AND PEOPLE: THE NEW TESTAMENT IDEA...........eeeeeeeees 109 


Inevitableness of Office-Making. 

1. The Beginning in Jerusalem as Shown in Acts. Association, or- 
ganization. Presbyters in Asia Minor. 

2. Testimony of the Earlier Pauline Epistles. The ministry of gifts 
included two kinds of service. 

3. Testimony of the Later Pauline Epistles. Four facts made clear: 
(1) the organization was gradual, (2) it went on in some places more 
slowly than in others, (3) the ministry of gifts preceded the ministry 
of orders, (4) the ministry of orders also included two kinds of 
service. 

4. The Relation of Officers and People Embodied Three Main Ideas: 
(1) Representation—illustrated in messengers, presbyters, deacons, 
charisms, sacraments. (2) Divine appointment—shown by the quali- 
fying gift and the grace of love. (3) Service—a universal principle. 


Résumé. 
Te 
OFFICERS AND PEOPLE: Loss AND RECOVERY OF THE IDEA................0-. 130 
Review. 


1. In the Sub-Apostolic Age the New Testament Idea Was Still 
Followed. 

2. Perversion of the Ministry into a Hierarchy. The causes: (1) 
respect for authority, (2) form of the celebration of the Lord’s Sup- 
per, (3) wealth of church officers, (4) civil honors and privileges be- 
stowed upon church officers, (5) monasticism, (6) sacerdotalism. 

3. Differentiation of the Terms Clergy and Laity. The people grad- 
ually subjected to the clergy. Illustrated in the Church of Rome to- 
day. The people themselves partly to blame. 

4. This Changed Relation of Officers and People Illustrated in the 
History of Ordination. When is the qualifying gift and grace received? 

5. Some Change of Organic Form Demanded. But the actual change 
a corruption. Its negative cause the loss of the Spirit’s guidance. 
Difficulties of the true Christian and ministerial life. 

Restoration of the New Testament Order. 


xil Contents 


Pact 


III. 


SERVICE: THE Deracon—His Eartier OFFICE...... a cialis ee 


Restatement of Fundamental Truths. 

1. The Most Characteristic Office of Early Christianity. The ideal 
of service given in Jesus. 

2. Beneficence in the Apostolic Age. Shown in Jerusalem and else- 
where. Care of widowhood illustrating Christianity and common 
sense. 

3. The Church Not Distinctively for the Relief of the Poor. Com- 
pare its object with that of the civil government and the school. 
Would socialism satisfy? 

4. The Rise of the Deacon Was to Have Been Expected, Origin 
and significance of the technical term. Functions not mentioned in 
the New Testament. The Seven. 

5. The Diaconate in the Post-Apostolic Age. Deacons’ functions 
barely suggested. Their moral and spiritual qualifications compared 
with those of the presbyters. 

6. Why Such Qualifications for an Office Conversant about Material 
Things? Giving a “grace.” Avoidance of slander. The poor “God’s 
altar.” 

7. Through Flesh to Spirit. The medical missionary. 


IV. 
Tue Dreacon—His LATER AND PRESENT OFFICE..... Sea sos alee eereeetne 


The Bishop’s Assistant. 

1. This Assistance Was Threefold: (1) in ministration to the poor, 
(2) in the conduct of worship, (3) in the exercise of discipline. 

2. Ere Long the Deacon Became the Bishop’s Adviser and Deputy. 
Rise and development of the arch-diaconate. The diaconate as a step- 
ping stone to the presbyterate. Decline in the deacon’s share in dis- 
cipline and ministration to the poor. So by the year 500 the diaconate 
was a greatly changed office. 

3. In the Present Age. In the Roman Church. In episcopally gov- 
erned Protestant Churches. Partial return to the primitive type in 
certain Protestant Churches. 

4. Extension of the Diaconate in Two Directions. The Sub-Deacon. 
The Acolyte. The Exorcist—power of mind over body. The Reader— 
not merely a reader. Minor and Holy Orders. 


V. 


SERVICE: THE DEACONESS...... Siejese afelaboleislasere le/aie ol Gjuielatclel ojeih eieielehetiiate aaa 
Woman as a Church Officer. 
1. Rise of the Woman’s Diaconate. Appears first in the fourth cen- 
tury. Chiefly an Eastern institution. 
2. Deaconess and “Widow.” Their similarities and differences, 


168 | 


182 


Contents xiii 
Pace 

3. The Primitive Deaconess. Duties, age, qualifications. Decline 
and discontinuance of the office. 

4. Revival of the Idea in the Sisters of Charity. Origin and rules 
of this society. Other sisterhoods. 

5. Revival of the Idea in the Modern Deaconess. “Sisters” and dea- 
conesses compared. Foretokens of the coming deaconess—Independ- 
ents, Mennonites, Puritans, Wesley. Fliedner and Kaiserwerth. 

6. In the Evangelical Churches of To-Day. Estimate of the modern 
woman’s diaconate as to (1) its central idea, (2) its Scripture prece- 
dents, (3) its economic aim, (4) its fruits. 


VI. 


AUTHORITATIVE SUPERVISION: THE PRESBYTER—HIs EARLIER OFFICE...... 203 

Oversight a Service. 

1. Non-Official Oversight Concentrated in Individuals and Made 
Official. Government from God, and exemplified on earth and in 
heaven. 

2. The Presbyterate as an Extension of Parenthood. Parenthood a 
type of the Divine government. Whence patriarchal and presbyteral 
government. The presbyteral the fatherly authority in the Church. 

3. In Israel. Elders of Israel in the Old Testament, the inter- 
biblical, and the New Testament period. Their office not that of the 
tulers of the synagogue. An ecclesiastic republicanism. 

4. In the Christian Churches. The presbyterate passing into Chris- 
tian congregations, Jewish, Gentile. Not everywhere prevalent at the 
first. 

VII. 
THE PRESBYTER: His LATER AND PRESENT OFFICE........2020eeeeeeceees 214 

Office Arising Out of Need. 

Presbyteral duties in the apostolic period. Congregational, not inter- 
congregational. 

1. Presbyters as Judges and Administrators. The Christian as com- 
pared with the Jewish presbyterate. Illustrated by difference in the 
forms of worship in synagogue and church. 

2. The Presiding Presbyter, or Bishop. Concentration of functions. 
Restoration of functions to presbyter under diocesan episcopacy. Sig- 
nificance of the presidency of the Lord’s Supper. Detachment of pres- 
byter from bishop’s council. 

3. Presbyter Perverted into Priest. Hence not even the episcopate a 
higher “Order.” 

4. Development of the Arch-Presbyterate. In the city, in the coun- 
try. The Methodist presiding eldership. 

5. The Scriptural Presbyterate in Presbyterian Churches of To-Day. 
Teaching and ruling elders. Need of such a system as set forth by 
Calvin—disorder attending the Reformation. In other than Presby- 
terian Churches the eldership for the most part a purely ministerial 
office. 


xiv Contents 


VIII. os 


Unity: THE BrsHop—Earty DEVELOPMENT OF His OFFICE.........----- 


Unity a Necessity of Philosophic Thought. Shown in all Works 
and Undertakings. 

1. The Principle of Unity in Societies—in the Church. But not 
notably illustrated in the New Testament churches. Nor in sub-apos- 
tolic time. The plural presbyterate was the office of rule. 

2. Beginnings of the Single Congregational Episcopate. Shown by 
Justin Martyr and “Sources of the Apostolic Canons.” 

3. Completer Development of This Episcopate. Shown by Ignatius. 
Personality of Ignatius. The congregational bishop, or pastor, to be 
clothed with autocratic power. But it was in principle the power of 
government for which Ignatius contended. A distinction must be made 
between the Ignatian ideal and the practice of the churches. Three 
stages of episcopal development. 

4. The Irenzan Conception of the Bishop’s Office. The bishops the 
guarantors of apostolic doctrine. A succession of bishops. But what 
if they should make mistakes? 

Comparison of Ignatius and Irenzus. 


IX. 


THE BisHOP—LATER DEVELOPMENT OF HIS OFFICE......-.-cceeecccccuces 


1. Peculiarities of the Cyprianic Episcopate. Each bishop independ- 
ent. The bishops collectively the bond of union for the universal 
Church. What, then, is the Church? 

2. Reconciliation of the Two Ideas of Episcopal Independence and 
Collectivism. Analogue in modern Congregationalism. 

3. The Bishop’s Office an Immediate Gift from God. The bishop a 
sticcessor of the Apostles and a priest. Hence his supreme authority. 

4. Estimate of the Cyprianic Episcopate. Résumé. 

5. Rise and Development of Diocesan Episcopacy: (1) Through the 
outgrowth and the presbyteral oversight of new congregations. (2) 
Through the grouping of rural congregations. (3) Through the 
subordination of chapels on the estates of landowners to the bishop 
of the county town. (4) Through the appointment of missionary 
bishops. 

6. Ritual Episcopal Functions: Ordination—confirmation—consecra- 
tion of church edifices. 

The Bishop as Magistrate, Feudal Lord, Military Leader. 


X. 


THe BisHor: Qricin OF His | OFFICE... 5 ooajnieicles oe ee seee se RR oc nee 
Not a Mere Historic Question. 

1. Theory of Elevation from the Presbyterate. Identity of presbyter 

and bishop in the New Testament and in subsequent literature. , Chair- 


228 


258 


Contents xv 
PAGE 
man of board of presbyter-bishops becomes preéminently a bishop 
(overseer). Inherent probability. Supported by the fact that after 
the rise of the single episcopate bishops were still called presbyters. 
Example in the Alexandrian Church of making a bishop by elevation 
from the presbyterate. Different dates of origin. 

2. Theory of an Original Difference between the Two Offices. 
Argument pro and con. 

3. Theory of Origination in the Administration of the Lord’s Sup- 
per. Presbyters simply honored old men of the community. From them 
the bishop was chosen. From the first one bishop only. 

Criticism. 

4. True Significance of the Lord’s Supper in the Development of the 
Episcopate. Presidency at the Lord’s Supper would naturally carry 
with it financial and disciplinary duties. 

Theory of Apostolic Succession. 


IN THY APOSTOLIC "SUCCESSION )- cts!ajcle hice ne cre ok ee lecie sees a mule alelaeete tl 274 

Two Theories of Apostolic Succession. 

I. Its History in the Church of England. Symbols, true and false. 

2. The Scripture Argument pro and con. 

3. Testimony of the Sub-Apostolic Age—for example, that of Ig- 
natius. Testimony of Irenzus to a doctrinal succession from the Apos- 
tles. The episcopal office antedated the successional claim. Illustrated 
by history of divine right of kings. Cyprian the first prominent advo- 
cate of the theory of a sacerdotal succession. 

4. Theories to Account for the Silence of History as to the Single 
Episcopate before the Time of Ignatius: (1) All presbyters were em- 
powered to ordain. (2) Some one member of a board of presbyters 
was empowered to ordain. (3) The Apostles ordained itinerant bish- 
ops, who afterwards located. No proof. 

5. The Successional Sacerdotal Episcopate a Roman Idea. Rome 
asked, What is effective? Evolution of the papacy. 

The Church Imperialized. 


XII. 


Apostotic SuccESSION: THE UNREAL AND THE REAL.........0.cececeees 293 

The Most Indubitable Proof Demanded. Such proof impossible. 

1. The Supposed Grace Would Have Had to Be Transmitted through 
the Hands of Many Most Wicked and Impure Men. Not a mere case 
of unworthy officers. 

2. A Violation of the Analogy of God’s Other Ways of Helping 
Men through Their Fellow-Men. Human influence not mechanical. 
High Anglicanism compared at this point with Romanism. Does the 
Incarnation yield support to ritualism? 

3. The Testimony of Christian and Ministerial Experience. 


xvi Contents 
Pace 

4. The Practical Test. May covenanted grace lie unused in the soul? 

Summary. 

5. The Claim of Apostolicity for the Two Lower Orders in the 
Ministry. The diaconate essentially different from that of the New 
Testament. The priesthood an utter perversion of the New Testament 
presbyterate. 

6. The Episcopate as a Center of Unity. Both the ancient and the 
modern episcopate such a center. Might some non-episcopal bond of 
unity have served the purpose better? False claims on the part of the 
ruler do not make for genuine unity. 

7. The Real Apostolic Succession. It is (1) divine, through the 
direct call of God, (2) ecclesiastical, (3) evangelical, (4) charis- 
matic, (5) apostolic in teaching and spirit. 

This Makes for Unity. 


XIII. 
Tue BisHop—FroM DIOCESAN TO POPE..........-- oss Sink emter SAS 
1. Origin of the Metropolitan, or Archbishop. Cyprian as an Ex- 


ample. 

2. Origin of the Patriarchate. Demand for unity not satisfied by the 
archbishopric. Further ecclesiastic centralization favored by the ad- 
ministrative organization of the civil government. 

3. Acknowledged Preéminence of the Roman Patriarchate. The 
bishop of Rome acknowledged as chief patriarch for the following 
reasons: (1) the political supremacy of Rome, (2) the supposed apos- 
tolic origin of the Roman Church, (3) the supposed Petrine origin of 
the see of Rome, (4) the orthodoxy of Rome, (5) her wealth and 
beneficence. This supremacy of honor not seriously questioned. Not 
only individuals but also General Councils favored it. 

4. The Monarchical Claim of Rome. Growth of this papal idea as 
represented by Victor, Stephen I., Siricius, and Innocent I. 

5. Yet Leo the Great May Be Called the Founder of the Papacy. 
His personality. Four examples of the course of action through which 
Leo sought to establish the papal throne. ; 

6. The Ground of the Papal Claim as Compared with That of the 
Cyprianic Claim. | 

7. The Papacy of the Middle Ages Pursued the Course Marked Out 
by Leo. Gregory the Great and John the Faster. 

8. A Reversal of the Order of Historic Facts. Were the makers of 
the papacy sincere? 


Tue BISHOP—THE PAPACY........000c.ecccceseees ssn ee 


The Claim of Roman Constitutional Supremacy Was Never Ac- 
knowledged by the Church. 
1. Constantinople, Rejecting Roman Autocracy, Took Its Position of 


Contents xvii 
PAGE 
Honor with Respect to the Other Eastern Patriarchates. Thus the 
Catholic Church was virtually broken in twain. 

2, Establishment of the Papal Claim in the West. Papal Rome, like 
Imperial Rome, had the gift of government; and great was the oppor- 
tunity in the West. Thus ecclesiastical Rome triumphed over the con- 
querors of imperial Rome. 

3. Shall the Medieval Papacy Be Approved? Not a question of ap- 
proving the papal frauds, or the peculiar papal claims, or the Divine 
overruling of an evil thing unto good ends. A question of the need- 
fulness of an authoritative personal head of the Church of the West 
in the Middle Ages. An argumentative illustration from modern 
times. | 

4. Two Additional Stages of Papal Development: (1) Government 
of the nations in the interest of the Church; (2) doctrinal and ethical 
infallibility. Through what organ is the teaching of the supposed in- 
fallible Church to be expressed? The decree of the Vatican Council. 
Inevitable failure of the papal dream of unity. Its persistency. 


XV. 


NSinrurrs vaca Mt tome GO OUGNC TE: anche Sicrsisrs, oisererel esl sehg adu sheie ere lavainls spar bvale,aialavereiesey siete 350 


The Universal Conciliar Idea and Its Element of Unity. 

1. Councils in the New Testament. When differences arose in the 
New Testament churches, the determinative word of an Apostle was 
available. Also a notable council in Jerusalem. In what sense was it 
universal? In what sense an example to be followed? Various New 
Testament references to local councils. 

2. Early Inter-Congregational Councils. In the second century “oc- 
casional”—with reference to the election of a pastor, to Montanism, to 
the Easter controversy. In the third century, provincial councils—for 
example, those with reference to re-baptism. 

3. These Provincial Councils Were Representative Bodies Composed 
Chiefly of Bishops, but Also Including Presbyters, Deacons, and Lay- 
men. Their decisions not authoritative. They defined existing cus- 
toms—for example, in fixing the New Testament canon. 

4. The Ecumenical Councils. Would these ever have been held 
without the alliance of Church and State? The imperial purpose in 
the Council of Nice. Official position and personal character of its 
members. “Civil war in the Church of God.” Its enactments concern- 
ing three great causes of division. 

5. Ecumenical Councils Subsequent to the First. In all Seven, bish- 
ops only could vote. Not really ecumenical. What is yet to come? 

6. Dependence of These Councils on the Emperor. A problem of 
Providence. Roman councils called ecumenical. 

7. Doctrinal Authority of the Ecumenical Councils. Doctrinal de- 
cisions of an evangelical council to be judged by the Scriptures. Their 
principles and grades, ; 


A 


XViil Contents 


Part JT. 
AUTONOMY. 
I Pacz 
Tue ‘CONGREGATIONAL “IDEA... 0.200500. 5 one sae oo occa eee S8PE 75} 


Is This the New Testament Idea of Organized Christianity? 

1. Original Motive of the Congregational Churches. Withdrawal 
from the English Establishment. Inter-congregational fellowship. 

2. English Congregational History. Robert Browne—Henry Bar- 
rowe—John Robinson. Later English Congregationalism. 

3. American Congregational History. The Pilgrim Fathers—elder- 
ship, association of churches. Countercurrents represented by John 
Wise and Nathaniel Emmons. “The National Councils,” 1871. 

4. Principles and Regulations of the Congregational Churches. 

5. Rise and Progress of the Baptist Churches. In Europe, in Amer- 
ica. Principles and regulations. “Open communion.” “The Disciples 
of Christ.” 

6. Estimate of the Purely Democratic Theory of Church Govern- 
ment. Commended by (1) its simplicity, (2) its avoidance of the 
abuse of general governmental powers, (3) the responsibility which it 
places upon church members, (4) its encouragement of the sense of 
Christ’s headship of the congregation, (5) its promotion of fellowship 
and the exercise of spiritual gifts. 

On the other hand, it misses the advantages of representative goy- 
ernment, congregational and inter-congregational, and a compact gen- 
eral organization under personal supervision and leadership. 


II. 
HE WCONCILIAR IDEAS aeons Jsideiscies deyase kn sea eee (e's) ES 306 


Both Self-Government and Government by Others Are Instinctive 
Faiths and Principles. Sanctioned by the New Testament. How much 
of each is the question. 

Divine source of government. 

Congregationalism compared with Presbyterianism. 

1. The Calvinian Polity. Calvin’s reverence for law. Outline of 
polity in the Institutes. The Genevan Church: its governing bodies, 
its connection with the State, the wide extension of its polity. 

2. Forms of American Presbyterian Polity. Why the governing 
bodies are called courts. The three fundamental principles of church 
polity as set forth in the New Testament. 

3. Some Significant Presbyterian Beliefs: (1) Identity of the Church 
in all Ages, (2) Infant Church Membership, (3) Church Courts in 
gradation, (4) Catholicity. 

4. Estimate of the Presbyteral Polity. Is it republicanism? Its 
conservatism. Its adaptation to the Reformation period. Present 
adaptation. The cost of its advantages. 


Contents xix 
III. PaGE 
Tue Episcopat Ip—A: PRELATIC, SUCCESSIONAL...........2cceceececcees 409 


All Governmental Authority Vested in Bishops. An episcopal of- 
fice a natural development. Its prototype in the apostolate. Analogy 
of civil government. 

1. But the Apostolic Idea of Superintendency Differs Essentially 
from the Sacerdotal Idea of Prelacy. The Reformers either retained 
or discontinued the episcopal office, as they deemed expedient. 

2. Some Historic Peculiarities of the Church of England. “No bish- 
ops, no king.” Present position. The divine right of bishops not the 
early teaching of this Church. Seemingly contrary implication in 
Preface of the Ordinal. 

3. Affinity of Apostolic Succession and Sacerdotalism. 

4. Forms of Anglican Church Government. In what sense is it a 
government by laymen? 

5. Extension of the Church of England to America. No bishop in 
the Colonies. 

6. Organization of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

7. The Protestant Episcopal Church Compared with the Anglican 
Church. In government, in attitude toward other churches. Its forms 
of government. 

8. Institutionalism in These Two Churches. 

9. Isolation of These Two Churches. Tentative movements toward 
communion with Rome, the Orthodox Eastern Church, and non-succes- 
sional Protestant churches. 


IV. 
Tue EpiscopaL IDEA: PATRIARCHAL, IMPERIAL, PAPAL...............000: 


The Prelatic Theory Provides for Diocesan Government Only. How 
then shall the common government of the whole Church be adminis- 
tered? by an elected archbishop? by a supreme council ? 

1. Development of the Patriarchal Idea. A hierarchy, patriarchs, 
the patriarch of Constantinople holding a primacy of honor. But va- 
rious national churches left to govern themselves. An ecumenical 
council, if one were held, would wield supreme authority. Is the gov- 
ernment that of an oligarchy? 

2. Orthodoxy the Chief Note of the Eastern Church. Futile Roman 
efforts to heal the schism. Attitude toward other churches. Forms of 
government and administration. 

3. The Imperial Idea as Illustrated in the Russo-Greek Church. 
Conversion of Russia. Still lingering paganism. Establishment of 
the Russian patriarchate. ; 

4. Autocratic Rule of the Czar. Abolition of the patriarchate by 
Peter the Great. The theocratic idea. Opponents of the Russian au- 
tocracy. Forms of government, administration of sacraments, and con- 
gregational worship, 


<x Contents 
Pack 

5. The Papal Idea That of a Bishop of Bishops. Absolute power of 
the pope as legislator, judge, and executive. Claim of authority over 
all baptized persons, and over the nations. The infallible teacher. 
How shall the pope be selected? Forms of government. 

6. The Bishops’ and the Pope’s Order That of Priesthood. Indeed, 
the pope might be a layman. Celibacy of the priest a great adjunct of 
the papacy. 

7, Audacity of the Papal Claim. Psychological origin of the historic 
papacy. 


Mf 


Tue EprscopaL IDEA: SCRIPTURAL, EXPEDIENT—EARLIER FORMS.......... 402 

Is the Abuse of the Episcopal Office Inseparable from Its Use? 

1. How the Episcopate Arose in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. 
The fundamental principle was congregationl. But in Europe an epis- 
copate was approved as expedient. The “episcopate of the prince.” 
The Superintendent. 

2. The Organic Development of the Lutheran Church in America. 
Compare presidents of synods and conferences with bishops. Forms 
of government. 

3. How the Episcopate Arose among the Bohemian Brethren. The 
extension of the “Ancient Church.” Period of the “Hidden Seed.” 
Resuscitation through Count Zinzendorf and Christian David. The 
episcopal succession. The idea of “exclusive” church “settlements.” 
Missionary activity. 

4. Earlier and Later Moravian Episcopal Functions. The Provinces; 
the Synods; the ministry in three orders. 


VI. 


THE EprtscopaL IDEA: SCRIPTURAL AND EXPEDIENT—LATER FORMS........ 478 

Origin of Methodist Societies. Movements as Dependent upon 
Men. 

1. Origin of the Methodist Itinerancy, Class Meeting, Episcopacy, 
Conference. The conference during Wesley’s lifetime. The Legal 
Conference. 

2. Growth of Methodist Organization. Early relation to the Church 
of England. Action of the societies after Wesley’s death, as to sac- 
raments and superintendency. How may the present government of 
the Wesleyans be classified? Forms of government. 

3. Other Methodist Episcopates. 

The Superintendency in the Methodist Church of Canada. The Presi- 
dency in the Methodist Protestant Church. The Superintendency in 
the Methodist Church of Japan. 

4. Episcopacy through Evangelism. 

5. Otterbein and the United Brethren in Christ, Circumstances un- 


s 


Contents xxi 
PAGE 
der which they became a separate ecclesiastic body with episcopal su- 
pervision. Forms of government of the United Brethren in Christ. 
Episcopacy in the Reformed Episcopal Church. 


VII. 
THE EptscopaL IDEA: AMERICAN EpIscOpPAL METHODISM..........220005% 493 


Development of British and American Methodisms compared. 

I. The Connectional Idea. Wesley’s authority supreme, represented 
by a general assistant. The people have no share in government. A 
providential polity. 

2. The Question of the Sacraments. Ordination of elders in Vir- 
ginia, and its discontinuance. Solution of the question in 1784 by 
Wesley’s ordination of elders and a general superintendent. The or- 
ganizing of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

3. The Development of Autonomy. Why Wesley’s office could not be 
perpetuated whole and entire. The Conference took his place even be- 
fore his death. So one’s work passes beyond one’s control. 

4. Further Developments. The presiding elder’s office. The Quad- 
rennial General Conference. Organization of the Church completed 
in the institution of the Delegated General Conference. 

5. Later Forms of Organization. An exclusively ministerial govern- 
ment. May it be justified under the law of love? Introduction of the 
laity into the government of the Church. 

6. The Bishop’s Power. Theoretically open to serious objection, prac- 
tically effective. 

7. Is the Episcopate in Methodism an “Order?” 

8. Episcopal Limitations. The bishop has no legislative function, no 
voice in the trial of ministers, no option as to whom he shall ordain. 
Co6rdination and world-wide superintendency of the bishops. 

9. Power of This Polity. Its adaptiveness—ministerial character— 
utilization of lay workers—unity—organized aggressiveness. 

10. Perils. Its temptations to ambition—extreme demand for wis- 
dom in bishops and presiding elders—inevitable breaking up of pas- 
torates that might well have been continued—toleration of inefficient 
ministers—encouragement of restlessness. 

Change for the Sake of Power. 


HE MIDEA ONMMDEVINEDINIGET 2 cuisciercrcteteets vio) tiie ohnloss tr eaie a a arela Sod Shidle SA as 521 

The Question Stated. The affirmative answer. Two senses in which 
the phrase “by divine right” may be used. 

1. The Exegetic Argument. Inconclusive, but supported by (1) the 
sense of restfulness in that which is accepted as unchangeably fixed, 
(2) the feeling of exultation in a divinely ordered form, (3) the exi- 
gencies of controversy, (4) the practical effectiveness of the idea. The 
effect of controversy. 


xxii Contents 


Puc 


2. A Priori Considerations: (1) Would so important a matter be 
left indeterminate? (2) May not the Church of the Old Covenant be 
here taken as a prototype? (3) Are not doctrines and morals author- 
itatively taught? (4) A prescribed form necessary to good govern- 
ment. Counter presumptions. 

3. The Congregational Argument. The proposition. The proof as 
to (1) discipline, (2) election of officers, (3) legislation. Insistence 
that New Testament precedents are here universally binding. De- 
fects of the proof. Present position of Congregational churches. Con- 
gregationalism catholic, not sectarian. 

4. The Presbyterial Argument. Divergence of view as to the three 
divinely revealed laws. The proofs and their defects. Catholicity. 

5. The Prelatic Argument. Not mighty in the Scriptures, but leans 
upon ecclesiastical history. Exemplified in “The Church and the Min- 
istry.” Proofs offered. Practical application of the theory. 

6. The Papal Argument. The final appeal to the pope. But the 
Protestant final appeal is to the Scriptures. What estimate shall we 
make of the proofs offered? Similarity in the claims of prelacy and 
papacy. 

7. Conclusions. Where rests the responsibility? Divine right of 
the expedient. 

Not Rights but Love the Upbuilder. 


CONCLUSION. 
THE PROPHET IN ADMINISTRATION: .... «+0 000s vos c/e/saisiesieienieien polarons 

1. Formative Ideas in Church Organization. Hence the need of spir- 
itual insight. Prophetic teaching in Israel; in the apostolic churches. 
Imposition of the ecclesiastic substitute for the prophetic ministry. 

2. Protest against the Suppression of Prophetic Teaching. Mon- 
tanism. 

3. The Christian Prophet’s Gift and Messages. Spiritual insight 
compared with administration. 

4. Faults of the Prophet: (1) Clouded vision, (2) unfaithfulness, (3) 
failure to appreciate the difficulties of administration, 

5. Faults of the Administrator: (1) Resting in the Church as an 
ead, (2) satisfaction with external success, (3) selfish perversion of 
office. 

6. No Conflict between Spiritual Insight and Administration. The 
real need is their combination in the person of the office-bearer. Par- 
tial fulfillment of this need in Israel; in apostolic churches; in modern 


evangelic churches. 
What Would Its General Fulfillment Mean to the Church? 


INTRODUCTORY. 


As we go on to make acquaintance with our subject, we shall 
find ourselves looking at it from three distinct but closely related 
points of view—the historic, the biblical, the formative. 

1. The main lines of church organization, from the apostolic 
period down to the present time, will have to be taken account of. 
For to know whence a thing came is a long step toward finding 
out what it is and what it stands for. Without the light of the 
past, indeed, the bearings of many a present fact or idea would 
be unintelligible. Could a man know himself with no book of 
memory in which to read? And history is the memory of an 
institution. Therefore we need to take the historic view-point. 

2. But the pages of the history which we shall have to follow 
will lead back to a written record which is also history and much 
more. It will lead back to the Bible. In these Scriptures we 
shall find the origin of Christianity, and hence the germs of its 
subsequent organization. We shall learn something of the mind 
of its Author. We shall read the declaration, broad and clear, 
of its Divine purpose. Therefore it is needful to take the bib- 
lical view-point. 

But in connection with these two points there arises a not un- 
common historic difficulty. The sources of information, it will 
become evident, are insufficient for an unbroken line of knowl- 
edge. The comparatively few notices of church organization in 
the New Testament are not in every instance easy of interpre- 
tation. Then, too, with the close of the New Testament record, 
there begins a period of great obscurity—the “tunnel” period, it 
has been called—which continues for a generation. 

True, there have not been wanting, especially of recent years, 
able explorers in this field—or this church-history “tunnel,’”’ with 
the light at either end and almost nothing but darkness within. 
But when the witnesses, after more or less independent research, 
come to offer testimony and conclusions, they agree not among 
themselves. Hence, uncertainty in the mind of the learner. To 

(xxiii) 


xxiv Introductory 


cite One prominent instance, who can be sure that he knows the 
origin of the single episcopate? Among the contending guides, 
all alert and apparently competent, the ecclesiastic tourist is liable 
to some bewilderment as to whose lead he would best follow. 

‘Indeed, he will be tempted, at more points than this one, to 
harbor the suspicion that the unknown, and especially the un- 
knowable, may be the occasion of much controversial speech. 
“Why, that question admits of no answer,” said the cat to the 
owl, in their fabled colloquy. “Of course not,” replied the bird 
of wisdom; “‘what would we philosophers have to do if the ques- 
tion were settled?’ As with the philosophers, so sometimes 
with their friends the scholars and antiquarians. After all, there- 
fore, it behooves the common man to depend somewhat on his 
own thinking and a great deal on his own common sense. He 
will be reminded, moreover, that in many things one has to rest 
content with the tantalizing joy of questioning, conjecture, and 
research. 

It would be unreasonable, however, to complain of shadows 
that are by no means peculiar to this or any other subject of 
scholarly investigation. Still more unreasonable would it be, 
through either love or fear of the shadows, to imagine them 
darker than they actually are. Much is knowable. Even to 
those of us who must remain outside the charmed circle of ex- 
pert research, and compare the conclusions of the specialists with 
our own scantier and less immediate knowledge, a fair con- 
struction of the Church’s numerous and diverse types of polity 
seems quite possible. 

3. There is still another direction which any seriously inter- 
ested inquiry into our subject will be sure to take. Examine 
even a machine, utterly helpless and “dead” though it is in itself, 
and you will find, as the innermost thing which it contains, an 
idea. It is all compact of thought. No matter whether it be 
simple or elaborate in structure, prehistoric or modern, a mor- 
tar-and-pestle or an aéroplane, to search out the embodied thought 
is essentially to know the machine. And shall not the same thing 
be found true of an ecclesiastic structure—of any form of polity 


Introductory XXV 


and government built round religious experiences, ideas, and un- 
dertakings? If, then, as Dr. A. M. Fairbairn has recently 
phrased it, “every question in polity rests on a prior and more 
radical question in religion,” to know the religion is to touch 
the heart and forecast the growth of the polity. 

Therefore, that we may see more plainly how this comes to 
be, let us take the formative view-point. 

And just here it may somewhat clear the way to remember 
the large significance of the familiar word “idea” as we shall 
have to use it throughout. It means a truth in the mind—a 
truth as apprehended. Our idea of service, unity, authority, or 
any other great spiritual truth, is that truth, or Divine idea, so 
far as it has made itself known to us. 

But something more. Such an apprehended truth is a force. 
That is to say, it excites motives which move the will to action. 
It pulsates with energies, like a seed cast into the ground: “the 
seed is the word of God.” ‘Taken into heart and conscience, it 
bears the fruit of well-doing. Far from abiding alone, like an 
idle fancy or a conception in pure mathematics, it makes for 
character and conduct. For instance, let a Christian congrega- 
tion take in the idea of a life of voluntary service to men in the 
name of the Son of Man, let them lift up their eyes and see the 
little world of their own neighborhood or the larger world of 
mankind as their Lord’s harvest field calling for reapers; and 
whatever latent love for souls or passion for the glory of Christ 
may be in them will be quickened into activity. Or, let them have 
the Pauline vision of Christian unity, and so far as they are also 
possessed of the Pauline spirit of Christian fidelity, it will inspire 
them, as it inspired him, to give diligence to “keep the unity of 
the Spirit,” both in themselves and for the whole Church, 
the bond of peace.” 

So likewise with all the ideas that enter into the economy and 
organization of the Church. Viewed from one side, they stand 
for truths. Viewed from the other side, they stand for forces, 


+«Studies in Religion and Theology,” p. 5. 


XXVI Introductory 


impulses, motives, aspirations, emotions, the whole inner life of a 
Christian congregation as it comes out in institutional expression. 

Now, then, what are these ideas and feelings? how have they 
wrought? and what are the particular forms in which they. have 
progressively sought embodiment? These are things which we 
should like to know. 

As to outward forms, one has to bear in mind that, in this 
as well as in every other sphere of observation, they are subject 
to ceaseless change. Much as we sometimes wish to keep things 
just as they are in our natural life, for example, we find it al- 
ways quite impossible. Our friends are growing older every 
day—like ourselves. We look into the past and are saddened at 
the changes time has wrought. In nature it is not only the face 
of the sky that is never the same from hour to hour. Who ever 
looked upon the same scene twice? Even 


The hills are shadows and they flow 
From form to form, and nothing stands. 


But what of it? The world within the world does not change. 
The laws of nature—chemical, physical, vital—which are the 
ever active will of the Eternal, whereby crystals are builded, and 
surfaces colored, and fruit ripens on its stem, and the earth stead- 
ily keeps its orbit, and human life is lived, and a myriad homes 
are created—these never vary and never pass away. That is an 
awful journey which the light of worlds invisible must make 
before it may paint its picture upon the sensitized plate of the 
photographer; but it travels in the same way as the light of the 
fire in your grate, and in the same way as the light which fell 
upon the eyes of the Hebrew patriarch when Jehovah “brought 
him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven and tell 
the stars, if thou be able to tell them.” Matter, force, law—these 
persist through the ages; but these constitute the natural world, 
whose stability, therefore, is no less noteworthy a truth than its 
unceasing multitudinous changes. 

And this inward stability of the natural world amid all its 
outward instability is a parable of the organized Church—or to 


Introductory XXVil 


use the more significant term, of Christianity as organized. For 
here too the forms appear and disappear, persist and variously 
change, while the normative truths which the forms live upon 
and represent are unchangeable. These are Divine ideas, of 
which even more truly than of the uniformities, or laws, of 
nature, it may be said that amid all the mutations of time they 
are the same and their years do not fail. Millenniums hence 
they will greet whatever mind may choose to observe them, as 
fresh and fair in the dew of their youth as they were millen- 
niums ago. There may be such a thing as a worn-out institution, 
but there can be no such thing as a worn-out truth. 


Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter, 
Churches change, forms perish, come and go, 

But our human needs they will not alter, 
Christ no other age shall e’er outgrow. 


Knighthood—to take the first example that offers—is a worn- 
out institution. Any attempt to resuscitate it would be worse 
than idle. But the truth of it, which gives its story whatever of 
nobility and worth it may possess in our eyes, has not been lost. 
More alive than ever, it is operative in new and finer forms. The 
reverence for womanhood, the championship of the distressed, 
the defense of religion, the truth of Christ and the cross, which 
the order of chivalry represented under the limitations of a dark 
and chaotic time, is far more truly embodied in the Christian 
Missionary Society of to-day and its sons and daughters of the 
Cross going forth undaunted in all the world. 

Furthermore, the Christian ideas are also very high ideals. 
They have never yet come near being fully realized in the or- 
ganization and corporate activities of any church, whether of 
our own or of a bygone age. This, indeed, is what might have 
been expected. For Christianity is equally great in the accom- 
plished facts of redemption upon which it rests, and in the spir- 
itual ideals which it discloses: “Be ye therefore imitators of God 
as beloved children’’—the highest possible ideal—‘‘and walk in 
love even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us” 
—the all-inclusive redemptive fact. 


XXVill Introductory 


Take again as an example such an organific idea as service. It 
is ever present to the mind of any faithful church, and is dis- 
tinctly embodied in office and administration. But where is 
either the local congregation or the inter-congregational Chris- 
tian communion, whose offices, administration, and various forms 
of activity, and whose spirit of service expressing itself through 
them, are such as it can rest in and say: “I am rich and increased 
in goods and have need of nothing?’ The most faithful church 
will be the most likely to confess its unprofitableness, and the 
wisest the most likely to pray for increase of wisdom. The sig- 
nificance of the Young People’s Societies, the Woman’s Mis- 
sionary Societies, the Medical Missions, the Brotherhoods, the 
Open Churches, the Laymen’s Movement, of the present gener- 
ation, is their eloquent attestation of a striving after larger sery- 
ice as the collective Christian aim. 

Or, take the idea of unity. The Apostle of the Gentiles has 
given it inimitable expression: “(One Lord, one faith, one bap- 
tism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, 
and inall, . . . till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” 
Let the world-wide Church give it expression in practice. Let 
it be shown in inter-communion, in common counsel, in coopera- 
tive activity, in whatever governmental forms may be effectual. 
Less than this we can hardly believe to be a fitting fulfillment 
of the mind of Christ and the word of his Apostle. But such 
unity has been, through the long centuries, only a vision. Will 
it ever become a fact? At any rate, it is even now an illumining 
vision; and every faithful congregation, living in the light of it, 
is doing something, consciously or unconsciously, toward its real- 
ization. Let the churches acknowledge their sins against the 
spiritual oneness of the Church, which sins are the chief schis- 
matics: still the ideal abides, and not in vain. The Federal Coun- 
cil of the Churches of Christ in America is one of its most re- 
cent witnesses. 

Therefore it is here, in “those things which are not shaken,” 


Introductory SEKEX 


“even in imperishable formative truths, that the interest of our 
theme centers and our faith in Christianity as visible and organ- 
ized securely rests. 

Such, then, are the three points of view from which the ways 
of church organization, if any approach to a satisfactory knowl- 
edge of it is to be made, must be studied. 


It may also be well, in the way of introduction, to make men- 
tion of certain determinative beliefs which will appear all through 
the chapters that follow: 

1. A church is not essentially an organized body, but a simple 
brotherhood of Christians, no matter how few in number, who 
assemble together in the name of Christ for worship and service. 

2. Under all ordinary circumstances, such a brotherhood will, 
as a matter of practical necessity, not only observe order in its 
assemblies but also develop some official organization. 

3. The universal Church is to be conceived of as the aggre- 
gate of such assembling brotherhoods, with no necessary refer- 
ence to organization. 

4. The organizing purpose of Christianity is to promote the 
coming of the heavenly Father’s kingdom. 

5. Being a communion of Christians pledged to promote the 
coming of the Kingdom, a church is to be organized as a body, 
throughout, ministers and people alike, for active and continual 
service.” 

6. The teaching of the New Testament, both preceptive and 
historical, concerning church government, is to be reverently fol- 
lowed. 

7. The New Testament does, with abundant illustration, teach 
those ideas of fellowship in Christ, social dependence, individ- 
ualism, Divine vocation and appointment, representation, service, 
authority and obedience, unity, autonomy, evangelism, which, as 
various expressions of the all-inclusive principles of righteousness 


*For a somewhat fuller exposition of the foregoing principles than is 
given in this book, see “The Idea of the Church,” pp. 3-118, 


XXX Introductory 


and love, must forever be embodied in the constitution and work- 
ing economy of Christian churches. 

8. The New Testament does not, either directly or through 
reasonable inference, teach that a certain designated form of 
government has been prescribed for the universal Church of God 
throughout the ages, but leaves the whole matter of ecclesias- 
tical organization to be planned as well as administered by the 
Christian people themselves—the absence of a fixed and com- 
pulsory polity, as of a fixed and compulsory ritual, being an ele- 
ment of the universalism of Christianity. 

g. The Spirit of truth, ever abiding in the brotherhood of 
Jesus’ disciples, illumining his words and imparting grace to do 
the will of the heavenly Father, is to be trusted as the supreme 
Teacher and Leader, in matters not only of doctrine, worship, 
and personal conduct, but also of method and organization. 

These beliefs, then, if we shall see good reason to hold them, 
may serve as guiding principles in our field of ecclesiologic in- 
quiry. 


The dates of the early Christian documents, both biblical and 
post-biblical, are, in a number of instances, still matters of con- 
troversy. The following have been accepted, in the present 
study, as approximately correct. Of the New Testament books: 
Epistles to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, and the Gala- 
tians, 53-58; Epistle to the Romans, 55-58; Epistles to the 
Philippians and the Ephesians, 59-66; Epistle of James, 62 
(?); First Epistle of Peter, 65, 66; Gospels of Matthew and 
Mark, 66-68; Epistles to Timothy and to Titus, 64-68; Hebrews, 
67; Gospel of Luke, 75-80; Acts, 80-85; Gospel and Epistles of 
John, 90-95. 

Of Patristic literature: Epistle of Clement of Rome, toward 
the close of the first century; the Epistles of Ignatius, first quar- 
ter of second century; the Didache, the Pastor of Hermas, Justin 
Martyr’s First Apology and the Epistle of Polycarp to the Phi- 
lippians, about the middle of the second century; Sources of the 
Apostolic Canons, 140-180; Irenzus, Against Heresies, last quar- 


= = 


Introductory Xxxi 


ter of second century; Tertullian’s Works, second and third cen- 
turies; the Clementines, first half of third century; Canons of 
Hippolytus, 235-258; Origen, Against Celsus and the Epistles 
and Treatises of Cyprian, the middle of the third century ; Euse- 
bius, Ecc. Hist., first quarter of fourth century; Epistles and 
Sermons of Leo the Great, middle of fourth century; Apostolic 
Constitutions, the third and fourth centuries (with later addi- 
tions) ; Epistles and Treatises of Jerome, fourth and fifth cen- 
turies ; Epistles of Gregory the Great, near the close of the sixth 
century. 

Now the divergences of scholarly opinion as to the dates of 
these sources and authorities is not to be lightly treated. But 
neither should its importance for the question of church organ- 
ization be overestimated. And this may easily be done. Be- 
cause the case is one in which the significance of the facts is 
really but little affected by a difference in the chronological views. 
The critic—to take an extreme example—who will not allow 
the Pastoral Epistles to be any proper part of the New Testa- 
ment, but assigns to them, either in whole or in part, the very 
latest date that has been conjectured, will entertain no doubt 
that the form of organization to which these books refer did 
exist when the books were written. He will also have no doubt 
that it had existed for a longer or a shorter period theretofore. 
And as to how long a period it had thus existed, he must accept 
the testimony of the books themselves, unless there be found 
some conclusive reason to the contrary. At most, as Principal 
T. M. Lindsay has expressed it, “the matter involved does not 
concern a general conception of ecclesiastical organization, but 
whether a certain stage of development, which did exist some- 
time, was of an earlier or a later appearance—a question which, 
when we consider the utmost limits of time involved, is com- 
paratively unimportant.’” 


*“The Church aud the Ministry in the Early Centuries,” p. 138 


hone ei 


BROTHERHOOD. 


O Cross that liftest up my head, 
I dare not ask to fly from thee: 

I lay in dust life’s glory dead, 

And from the ground there blossoms red 
Life that shall endless be. 


—George Matheson. 


The Church is spiritual life—the life of individual souls—organized, knitted 
together in organic forms for ends of worship and service—_W. H. Fitchett. 


When the Church takes upon itself to see to the salvation of my soul, it 
has done its best to ruin me for time and eternity—W. L. Watkinson. 


This man is freed from servile bands 
Of hope to rise or fear to fall— 
Lord of himself, though not of lands; 
And having nothing yet hath all. 
—Sir Henry Wotton. 


So that each one of us stands before Thee as an only child—Wilhiam J. 
Young. 


(2) 


Ue 


THE UNIFYING TRUTH: “ONE MAN IN CHRIST 
JESUS: 


BROTHERHOOD and organization, though somewhat near akin, 
are not always found together. They do not imply each other. 
On the one hand, there may be an unorganized brotherhood. For 
all like-minded people will become aware that they are fellows, 
and so, without a dream of organizing themselves, will be drawn 
into some form of actual and outward fellowship. Thus arise 
groups of friends, “hordes” of savages, circles of society, cliques, 
“gangs” of boys, and other more or less worthy and noteworthy 
fraternities. It is true that in all these cases there may be sup- 
posed to exist a latent tendency to organize. But the tendency 
may fail to become operative, and so the brotherhood remain a 
brotherhood only. 

On the other hand, there may be a non-fraternal organization. 
This will appear when men unite as coworkers, under the princi- 
ple of the division of labor, through purely self-regarding mo- 
tives. It may be, for example, the case of a business partner- 
ship. Or it may be that of an employer with a number of em- 
ployees, each discharging his particular and appointed function, 
in the various processes of some mercantile or productive indus- 
try. It is quite possible for such men to work side by side for 
one-third of their time, and yet be actuated by a brotherly spirit 
little more than are the papers they sign, the tools they handle, 
or the machinery they manage. 

But the higher type of organization is that which is developed 
out of brotherhood. It is an inner life and fellow-feeling finding 
organs of activity—then regularly and variously at work for 
some common purpose. And here the preeminent example is 
that institutional representative of the kingdom of God on earth, 
the Church of Christ. A church in the New Testament time was, 
first of all, a simple Christian brotherhood, which afterwards, 


(3), 


4 Christianity as Organized 


through the necessities of its own urgent outreaching life, be- 
came an organization. In fact, it became an organization very 
soon—almost from the beginning. And such will be the way 
of Christianity always and everywhere. A Christian church 
takes form not as a mere brotherhood, and still less as a mere 
organization. It appears as a brotherhood organized.” 


I. CHRIST AS THE UNIFYING TRUTH. 


This brotherhood as organized is our subject of study. Let 
us begin with an inquiry as to the unifying truth, the creative 
idea, the formative force—all these being different names for 
the same thing—that brings people together into a church and 
organizes that church for growth and usefulness in the world. 
For some such unifying truth there must be. Just as a tree of 
the forest grows up and lives its life about a certain divine idea, 
enshrining a divine purpose, so is it with human society, and so 
very manifestly with the Church of God. The tree of course 
does all this unconsciously—the consciousness being solely in 
Him who is making the tree. But in the case of social organi- 
zation, this idea and purpose is to be shared by the society itself, 
and to be consciously its bond of union. Men, in their freedom, 
are thus to become workers together with God for the achieve- 
ment of his purpose. What, therefore, in the case of the Church, 
may we recognize as this conscious bond of union? 

The answer is Jesus Christ. It is the divine idea and purpose 
that men should be made Christlike, or, what is the same thing, 
that they should become in spirit and character sons of God. 
For this, accordingly, God sent redemption into the world, that 
all who would might be “conformed to the image of his Son.” 
How? Through the knowledge of him, through faith in him, 
through communion with him, through obedience to him, who 
is himself the image of the invisible God. In a word, through 
Christianity. 

And, moreover, as men, believing in Christ, become responsive 


“The Idea of the Church,” pp. 51, 52; 95 ff. 


The Unifying Truth 5 


to his transforming power, they come into spiritual unity with 
one another. For they become sharers of the one mind that was 
in him, and take up their several interrelated tasks in the doing 
of the one work which he has commanded. Christ who is “all” 
is also “im all.” Such is the origin of the Church; and such, 
nothing less and nothing other, is the unity of the Church. 

Now the extraordinary influence of the personality of Christ 
upon the men and women who first became his disciples is un- 
questionable. It woke such a response as human hearts had no- 
where made before. It was a compelling and a cumulative power. 
Cumulative not only as long as he was visibly with them; for 
after his going away he came to them again, in closer relation- 
ship, even in the Spirit, and gained the completer mastery of 
their lives. 

What, then, was the vision of the Divine One—for surely we 
shall find it to be nothing less—which, when these persons saw 
it in Jesus, made them not only his individual followers but also, 
and very manifestly, his congregation? It is altogether unlikely 
that they attempted, after any theological manner, to analyze his 
character or number his “offices”? or reason out to a satisfactory 
conclusion the truth of his nature. That came some generations 
later. Do we occupy our minds with a systematic attempt to 
analyze the nature and endowments of the man who is making 
himself our friend? We only know and feel the new personality 
that enters with a certain peaceful constraining power into our 
lives. Much more may we believe this to have been true of the 
first disciples and friends of the Lord Jesus. He was to them 
more and more a presence, a personality, known by its effects in 
their innermost being, as if it were life itself. Indeed, he was 
the Life, and was continually giving himself, giving them of his 
own—‘that they might have it very abundantly.” 

Yet it is no less than the duty of thoughtful Christian love to 
make answer to the Master’s own question: “Who say ye that I 
am?” What was it in Jesus of Nazareth that, in the New Testa- 
ment time, drew men to him as his disciples and congregations? 

As a matter of fact, all men were not drawn to him. Many 


6 Christianity as Organized 


were not. Some utterly rejected the claim that he put forth, and 
had him condemned to the death of the cross. Even after the 
Resurrection and Pentecost, some, so far from acknowledging 
the Master, persecuted his disciples unto prison and unto death. 
Very many more seem to have passed him by in a spirit of in- 
difference. As it is in the twentieth century, so was it in the first: 
“My sheep hear my voice.” What then was the attractive power 
which won those who did yield allegiance to Jesus and form a 
Christian brotherhood about him? 

That attraction was the awakening of the sense of spiritual 
needs and possibilities, and the satisfaction that such a hunger 
of the spirit received from him. It was said of the poet-philos- 
opher Coleridge by one of his friends: ‘““He wanted better bread 
than can be made of wheat.” So does every man; but especially 
so does the man in whom hunger of the spirit, which is his 
deepest self, is awakened. But nowhere else does this cry of 
want find the answer which it has found in Jesus, the very Bread 
of God. Those upon whom that offer had power, in the begin- 
ning of the gospel, came to him, gave him their hearts, obeyed 
his words. 

For one thing, they beheld in him, as it had never appeared 
to them before, the revelation of spiritual truth. “Rabbi, we 
know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can 
do these signs that thou doest, except God be with him.” 
But for stronger reasons also than the marvelous physical 
signs that thus impressed Nicodemus, Jesus was recognized as 
“a teacher come from God.” That is to say, the teaching it- 
self was a greater “sign.’’ It stirred the deepest intuitions of the 
religious nature, broke the slumber of the soul, searched the con- 
science, opened up the realm of spiritual reality, as this had not 
been done by the wisest and best who had gone before. They, 
indeed, as prophets of Jehovah, received messages from on high 
for Israel; but he dwelt perpetually in the light of God’s eternal 
love, without a cloud between, and out of the revelations of 


*John iii. 2. 


The Unifying Truth 7 


that Presence taught the people. “The words that I say unto 
you I speak not from myself, but the Father abiding in me 
doeth his works”—the words of Jesus, which were the works of 
the Father. And a still greater sign—though one that should 
be much “spoken against’”—was the prophet-teacher himself. 
He not only revealed the truth—peerless and priceless as were his 
utterances: he himself was the revelation. For that which he 
spoke he was. By continual self-expression, in word and look 
and deed, he showed himself to be the very Truth and Wisdom 
of God. It was not as if a torchbearer came uplifting a torch; 
the light shone from within, from the Man, “as the sun shineth 
in his strength.” “The Worp became flesh.” Is it any wonder 
that those who were “of the truth” should be attracted to him 
and consent to group themselves about him as a company of 
learners? ‘One is your teacher, and all ye are brethren.” 

But to say that Jesus was the highest truth incarnate is only 
another way of confessing his perfect rightness of nature. Men 
who had eyes to see did see in him the Divine holiness. It was 
not simply that he could challenge opponents to break the force 
of his teaching or of his personal claim by pointing out any 
moral obliquity in his life: “Which of you convicteth me of 
sin?’* That were a comparatively little thing. The great 
fact is that the self-consciousness of Jesus, as expressed in 
the whole course of his recorded history, was the consciousness 
of entire oneness with the Father. A petition for the forgive- 
ness of trespasses, such as he taught the disciples to offer when 
they prayed, would not only be unthinkable on his lips now by 
those who believe upon him, but it must have been so then. 

Simon Peter often spoke in a truly representative character, 
but never more so, we may believe, than when he cried: “Depart 
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’ It was personal 
unworthiness bearing witness to the Worthy One, the sense of 
sin becoming intolerable in the presence of the visualized holi- 
ness of God. 


*Matt. xxiii. 8-10. *John viii. 46. *Luke v. 8 


8 Christianity as Organised 


Not only so. Men of faith found in Jesus the mastership of 
the spirit. For holiness is power. It is the moral law person- 
alized. The sinner, even though resisting its claim, stands in 
awe of it, acknowledging its sovereign right to obedience. It is 
a celestial vision that must speak in imperatives. And the human 
soul needs such an imperative. It needs to say “Lord,” and in- 
stinctively feels after some one greater than itself whom it may 
reverence, trust, honor, follow, obey. So the disciples of Jesus, 
finding the very sovereignty of the spirit in him, called him not 
only teacher but Lord. It was his to command, theirs to obey. 
Gentle, sympathetic, considerate, ministrant, declaring on the 
night of his betrayal, ““No longer do I call you servants, 
but I have called you friends,” yet the sovereign of the soul, 
whose word was law. “Ye are my friends, if ye do the things 
which I command you.” “Ye call me Master [Teacher] and 
Lord; and ye say well, for so I am.’”* To them, therefore, as 
to those who learned his name afterwards through the gospel 
and the interpreting Spirit, Jesus was the Lord Jesus Christ. 
And well might the willing servants of the one Master, uniting 
to keep his commandments, form a household about him. 

Moreover, such a Master, exemplifying in daily life all grace 
and truth, would become their spiritual Ideal. Did he not dis- 
tinctly offer himself as an example to be followed by them all? 
“Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to 
minister.”* “For I have given you an example, that ye also 
should do as I have done to you.’”* To become Christlike, 
changed into the spiritual splendor of his image, was unques- 
tionably the Christian ideal. The uttermost self-sacrifice must 
be accepted by the disciples of him who went in unspeakable suf- 
fering, but with undeviating footstep, to the death of the cross. 
“Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us; 
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’”* Nor can 
they picture to themselves any happier immortality than to be 


1John xv. 15. *John xiii. 13. *Matt. xx. 28. ‘John xiii. 15. °r John iii. 16. 


The Unifying Truth 9 


gathered into his everlasting kingdom as sons of God, and seeing 
him as he is, to become like him.* 

But this was not all. The crowning glory of Jesus was his 
atoning love. He was the Lord Jesus. Whatever of victory or 
deliverance could have been signified by such a name, through all 
the momentous history of ancient Israel, was fulfilled far be- 
yond the most daring dream of parent or prophet, by him who 
bore that saving name from Bethlehem to Calvary and on into 
the world of the Resurrection. His victory was victory over 
death. His deliverance was deliverance from the awful tyranny 
and doom of sin. “Who was made unto us wisdom from God, 
and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’” 

It was other truths than this, indeed, that first made the Twelve 
his disciples; because at the beginning this truth was undiscov- 
ered by them. Not that his love was undiscovered by them; for 
how could such love and sympathy as thrilled through the life of 
Jesus fail of some conquering effect upon even the least respon- 
sive heart? “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” But 
it was the truth of atoning love as enthroned forever in his cross 
and resurrection that, under the illumination of the Spirit, won 
them to the deeper discipleship and the immortal hopes of their 
after life. Now they could rejoice to be “counted worthy to 
suffer dishonor for the Name.” Now they could pass through 
death to the Risen One, to be with him again and evermore. 
Now the cross, which had once tended to divide and scatter— 
“every man to his own’—was drawing them into real communion 
with himself and with one another. No wonder if on the day 
of Pentecost, or on any other day, the followers of their glorified 
Master should be found “all together in one place.” 

And when the later Christians, like Saul of Tarsus, who had 
not seen him in the flesh, were led to confess “the Name,” they 
began as believers where those earlier believers were perfected. 
They bowed the knee, first of all, not to the Man of Galilee but 
to the Man of Calvary, exalted to be both Prince and Saviour, 


17 John iii. 2. *0 (Cor. 1. 30, 


10 Christianity as Organized 


in whom was the forgiveness of sins and the new birth into the 
truth and grace and kingdom of the Heavenly Father. 

Who, then, was the Jesus of the Gospels? The authoritative 
Teacher, the Holy One and the Righteous, the Lord of the con- 
science, the Ideal of moral perfection, the Divine Saviour of the 
world. “Who say ye that lam?” The Christ; but greater im- 
measurably than was predicted or known of old. “And upon his 
head are many diadems; and he hath a name written which no 
man knoweth but he himself.” 


“Jesus!” name of wondrous love, 
Human name of God above. 


Reverently, gladly, would we draw near and bow the knee be- 
fore him—Emmanuel, God manifest in the flesh. 

Is it possible, then, that there should be doubting inquiry as 
to what is the unifying truth of the Church? Must it not be that 
since his coming into the world the “Churches of God” not only 
“in Judza” but everywhere should be “in Christ Jesus?”* Were 
not the Gentiles, once pagans and far off, brought nigh in him to 
their brethren in Israel; so that of the twain were made “one 
new man,’ with access “in one Spirit unto the Father?”* Mark 
the ever-recurring language of the New Testament, “with Christ,” 
“through Christ,” “unto Christ,” “by Jesus Christ,’ “in the 
name of Jesus Christ,’ “for Christ’s sake,” “in Christ;” listen 
to the hymns of the ages; read the theological literature of the 
present-day Church. In it all appears the same supreme and inef- 
fable Personality, “the Power of God and the Wisdom of God,” 
the organizing wisdom and power of both the individual and the 
collective life. People becoming Christians gather themselves 
together into a church—it cannot be otherwise than in Christ. 


2. THE RESPONSE OF LovE—IN Emotion, WILL, SERVICE. 


The one most inclusive word to represent the Divine redeem- 
ing activity toward the world in Jesus Christ is the word love. 
“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” 


Rev. xix. 12. *1 Thess. ii. 14. 8Eph. ii. 13-18. 


The Unifying Truth II 


“Who loved me, and gave himself up for me.” In like manner 
the one best verbal expression of the response of the believing 
soul to its Redeemer is this same word, love. “We love because 
he first loved us.” 

But the greatest words, which are likely to be the commonest, 
are often the most poorly appreciated or understood. When 
spoken they convey different meanings to different minds, ac- 
cording to the different ideas of the hearer concerning the thing 
which is named by them. Now love is one of the everyday words 
of human speech; and we need hardly be reminded of the widely 
different meanings which it bears when used with reference to 
the various relationships of life or to the various temperaments 
and preferences of individuals. 

Let us ask, therefore, What is love to Christ, as we may be- 
lieve that Christ himself meant it to be? The word fo love, in 
his teaching, is uniformly a word (éyardé) which, while leav- 
ing out the idea of fondness, connotes such nobler feelings as 
regard, veneration, and devotedness, expressing themselves in 
a distinctly favorable attitude of will toward its object. The 
substantive form of the word (4ydr) is not to be found in 
classical literature. Apparently it had to be formed by the New 
Testament writers to express the revelation in Jesus of God’s 
attitude toward the world—‘for God is love [4yd7y]’’—and 
the attitude of the responsive heart which “loves because he first 
loved us.” 

May this love to Christ express itself in emotion? In some 
form of emotion, differing with differences of human tempera- 
ment, it will undoubtedly find expression. Of Jehovah himself 
it is written: “He will rejoice over thee with joy, he will rest in 
his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”* Psalmists had 
made not only the promises but the very statutes of God their 
“songs.’’ As Jesus stood at the grave of his friend Lazarus, or 
looked from Olivet upon the doomed City of the Great King, 
his eyes overfilled with tears. 


*Zeph. iii. 17. 


12 Christianity as Organized 


But the test of love is not in the emotions. It is in the attitude 
of the will. And this is no mystic doctrine: we may readily see 
how it is true. Because love is a desire for the welfare of its ob- 
ject, and as such it will incite to the voluntary doing of acts to 
promote that welfare. But a voluntary act is a thing of the will. 
Wherever else love may abide, therefore, this is true, that it 
abides in the will. Wherever else it may be, it is there, ever 
there, moving the will to certain acts and courses of action— 
to service, obedience, self-giving. Its reality is tested and its 
strength measured by the energy of the will to do kind and help- 
ful deeds. Such, accordingly, is the teaching of Jesus, and of the 
example of those who have given their hearts to him. “He that 
hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth 
me.”* “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. : 
Tend my sheep.’” “What do ye, weeping and breaking my 
heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die 
at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”* So, then, the 
regular and effective expression of the Christian’s love is in his 
will. 

And this attitude of heart and will toward Christ involves the 
like attitude toward God the Father and one’s fellow-men. It is 
the determination of the whole man, in Christ’s name, to “do 
good to all beings capable of good,” oneself included. Its spirit 
is by no means averse to singing songs or shedding tears, but its 
habit is the daily and perpetual doing of God’s will. For Jesus’s 
own life of love was to do this one thing, even the will of the 
Father who sent him. 


3. But Is Not Sre_r-Love a Common Motive or CHURCH 
MEMBERSHIP ? 


Now the question may arise, whether love to others is the sole 
or even the chief motive that draws men together in church 
membership. Does not one seek admission into the Christian 
congregation for one’s own sake? Is it not to help secure one’s 


1John xxi. 14, 21. 2John xxi. 16. *Acts xxi. 13. 


The Unifying Truth 13 


own salvation? is there not the motive of self-love in the act? 
And has it not been so from the beginning? To such questioning 
no other than an affirmative reply can be returned.” Indeed, as 
just said, in love’s desire to do good to everybody oneself is in- 
cluded. Nor can there be anything wrong in such a motive; for 
who can forget that Jesus once and again invites men to come 
unto him for their own good? Let us look, for illustration, into 
the content of a single one of these great words of the Master: 
“Tf any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” Does the 
soul thirst for knowledge? for righteousness? for love? for life— 
even to be brought into communion with the living God, so as 
to live indeed? All these are for itself. All may be desired with 
a self-regarding motive. This is undeniable. 

But in such self-love there is nothing inconsistent with love for 
others. On the contrary, the two agree perfectly together. In- 
deed, they are necessary to each other. On this plane of the high- 
est things, to seek one’s own is to seek others’ good, and to seek 
others’ is to seek one’s own. So long as self-love is not per- 
verted into selfishness, or love to others into sentimentality, per- 
sonal experience will prove them to be fellow-helpers of the uni- 
versal good. 

Yet it is also true that in the progressive experience of the 
things of the Spirit, the conscious seeking of one’s personal good 
becomes less and less, while love to Christ, service for the world, 
the doing of the Heavenly Father’s will, is rejoiced in more 
and more as its own exceeding great reward. Undoubtedly the 
line of progress lies in this direction. Whatever spiritual sta- 
tions, Bethels or Peniels, may be reached and passed, the height 
of Christian attainment beyond which no higher can be seen, is: 


*There is only one condition previously required of those who desire ad- 
mission into these societies, a “desire to flee from the wrath to come, and 
to be saved from their sins.’—General Rules of the United Society [of Meth- 
odists]. 

Dearly beloved, you profess to have a desire to flee from the wrath to 
come, and to be saved from your sins; you seek the fellowship of the people 
of God, to assist you in working out your salvation—Form of the Reception 
of Members into the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 


14 Christianity as Organized 


“That Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or 
by death, for to me fo live is Christ.” 


4. Love Amip Its ANTAGONISTS. 


After all, is here a fair, unbiased account, true to sober reason, 
of the formative and sustaining spirit of the Christian churches? 

The unsympathizing observer may be disposed to laugh this 
account to scorn. Looking at these churches from outside, and 
glancing back perhaps along the line of ecclesiastical history, 
it is no such celestial picture, he says, that meets the eye. It is 
no such high-tuned explanation of the nature and genesis of 
the numerous ecclesiasticisms around us, that can be reasonably 
accepted as in harmony with the facts. Not only self-love, but 
bigotry, worldliness, lust of power, lust of praise, rivalry, strife, 
ill-will, persecution, sectarianism, self-seeking in many ugly 
forms, have always been characteristic of the Church. And all 
this must be taken into the account in describing its formative 
principle and process. Thus runs the criticism. 

Nor is such an indictment to be, in turn, laughed to scorn; 
for it contains much unwelcome truth. It is certainly true that 
after churches have been established far and wide, and espe- 
cially when tempted by the favor of society or of the State, they 
are likely to be corrupted. It is also true that under any cir- 
cumstances, even the most favorable, they will show no lack of 
serious faults. In knowledge they are far from infallibility; in 
character they are manifestly not composed of “spirits of just 
men made perfect.’’ In the case of Christian churches formed, 
for example, in pagan communities of the present day, or in 
apostolic times, evil tempers will flash out and grievous sins may 
be committed. Even such a case as that of the rising Christian 
community in the Holy City a few days after Pentecost will 
prove to be no exception. 

But while all this is true, it is not the truth. There is such a 
fact as organized Christianity. There are real churches of Jesus 
Christ. Notwithstanding their numerous and painful imperfec- 
tions, any fair-minded observer would willingly call them by that 


The Unifying Truth 15 


name. So far, then, as they are true to their great name, what 
is their animating spirit, the secret of their power, the unseen 
life that attempts to put forth its proper organs of growth and 
achievement? That is the question; and the satisfactory answer 
can be found only in love to the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But if this be true, we should expect to find, as a confirmatory 
proof, that here also is the source of the renewal of life. And 
do we not find it to be so? The individual Christian knows full 
well that it is so with himself; and what is true of each separate 
soul is equally true of a society of souls. For each personally 
and for all as a body, to come back to Christ from any path of 
spiritual declension is to come back to the source of life and to 
begin again to ascend the heights of vision and power. 

Under the civil government the heart of true citizenship is not 
in a bare submission to law for the sake of avoiding its penalties 
or gaining some selfish advantage in politics or trade. It is patri- 
otism, which is a form of moral love that oftentimes proves its 
existence quite unexpectedly. In time of national peace and pros- 
perity, for example, it may seem that citizenship is little more 
than a means of self-protection and gain. Politics—what is it 
but a game which those who have a liking for it play for their 
own gratification? The people—are they not given up to pleas- 
ure-seeking and money-making, and ready at any time to de- 
ceive and defraud the government? Patriotism—is it not a mere 
enthusiast’s iridescent dream? But if so, let it be asked in re- 
ply: How came the idea of love of country into the mind of the 
earliest ages and of the whole world? what has made the word 
patriotism, in all elevated and earnest speech concerning one’s 
native land, a word of inspiring truth and power? and what mean 
the emotions that gather about that yard or two of linen or other 
fabric which is unfurled as the national flag? Let some awful 
crisis impend. Let a war for the nation’s life arise. All over 
the land a seemingly new and strange spirit of uncalculating sac- 
rifice will assert itself. Careless youth will be suddenly trans- 
formed into self-devoted manhood. And no accusation of hypoc- 
risy will be made when from the pitiless field of battle there 


16 Christianity as Organized 


comes back the oh) of surrendered lives: “I am willing to 
die for my country.” 

But how much more believable is it that membership in that 
Institution whose inner motive is Christianity, whose Founder 
is confessed as the Saviour of men, whose martyrs and mission- 
aries are in all the world, whose thousand ministrations to the 
needy in body and in spirit are so familiar as to pass unnoticed, 
whose divinely appointed end is the realization of the kingdom 
of God on earth—how much more believable is it that the very 
heart and crown of membership in the Church of God should be 
love to God in Jesus Christ and to men in Christ’s name? 


LY: 


SOCIAL DEPENDENCE: ADMISSION INTO MEM- 
BE IC STALE. 


Every man is no less truly a companion than a person. With- 
out association with others he could no more attain to a clear 
human consciousness than without a sense of his own person- 
ality. Nobody is self-sufficing. “One is always somebody’s 
child.” Out of companionship and into it we all are born. In 
any path of life, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, it is im- 
possible to walk alone. Let not the lover of sacred solitude 
imagine himself an exception. It was a wise person who said 
to young Wesley when a secluded student at Oxford: “You must 
find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of a 
solitary religion.’’ No solitude is sacred enough to build walls 
about a soul. 


I. CHRISTIANITY A SOCIAL RELIGION. 


In the spiritual life this need of companionship is most com- 
pletely fulfilled in the divine ordinance of the Church. Here, 
therefore, we find ourselves still in the presence of the truth, 
that fellowship with Christ will draw men together into a fel- 
lowship im him. Disciples of the one Teacher, servants of the 
one Master, imitators of the one Example, believers in the one 
sinless Saviour, they come through this supreme relationship 
into the spiritual kinship of brothers one of another. ‘‘Ye are 
one man in Christ Jesus.” 


*It was perhaps the most ardent and influential advocate of monasticism 
in the early Church that gave a young monk such counsel as this: “The 
first point to be considered is whether you are to live by yourself or in a 
monastery with others. For my part, I should like you to have the society 
of holy men, so as not to be thrown altogether on your own resources. For 
if you set out on a road that is new to you without a guide, you are sure 
to turn aside immediately. . . . In loneliness pride quickly creeps upon a 
man.’ (Jerome, To Rusticus, Ep. cxxv., c. 9.) Compare Martin Luther’s 
experience: “I myself have found that I never fell into more sin than when 
I was alone.’—“Table Talk,’ DCLXI1II, 


2 (17) 


18 Christianity as Organized 


Notably different is the case of a typical pagan cult. Here, 
notwithstanding religious festivals and a general like-mindedness 
which makes for fraternity, the dominant motive is the desire to 
propitiate offended deities. Hence a priesthood appears with its 
pretended but welcome mediation. Through the priest the indi- 
vidual worshiper makes his offering and hopes to win the favor 
of the gods. The sacerdotal transaction represents substantially 
the whole of religion. There is no special demand for an inter- 
communion of the devotees or a dependence on one another in 
their daily religious life. The idea of brotherhood is without 
any proper embodiment. 

In a pure form of Christianity, on the contrary, the law of 
brotherly love is regnant: no priest intervenes between the soul 
and the one common Saviour; religion, not ceremonial but vital, 
embraces the whole of life and calls for unceasing moral en- 
deavor; every possible help, human as well as directly Divine, 
is needed; interchange of experiences, sympathy, mutual service, 
cooperation, are called for; meetings and associations are in- 
evitable. “If they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe 
to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to 
lift him up!’ “According as each has received a gift, minister- 
ing it among yourselves.’” 

What is the architectural design of the pagan temple-builder ? 
A house for the occupancy of a god. What of the Christian 
architect? A house of worship and of service for the occupancy 
of the people. ‘God and one man,” it has been said, “will serve 
for any religion except Christianity.” Even in that most perfect 
picture of individualism in religion, “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” 
Christian must have his strength renewed in the Palace Beautiful 
amid congenial spirits, and must fall in with Faithful and other 
companions by the way. 


While Christian is among his godly friends, 
Their golden mouths make him sufficient mends 
For all his griefs. 


*Eccles. iv. I0, 21 Pet. iv. 10, 


Social Dependence: Admission 19 


Now this social need was distinctly provided for in the very 
beginning of the gospel. We can hardly conceive of a stronger 
emphasis on the social element in religion than that which Jesus 
gave. He declared himself present, though unseen, with his 
true disciples in any congregation of them on earth—“where two 
or three are gathered together” in his name. And just as when 
he promises to make his abode with the man who keeps his 
word,’ it is shown that he wills that men shall keep his word, and 
just as when he promises to be with those who teach and preach 
his gospel, “alway, even unto the end of the world,” it is shown 
that he wills that his messengers shall teach and preach, so like- 
wise when he promises to be in the congregations of his dis- 
ciples, it is shown that he wills that they shall meet together in 
congregations. 

But it is not only in verbal teaching that Jesus sets forth the 
sociality of religion. He shows it also and chiefly in his life. 
No recluse, no separatist, but the holy Friend of even the most 
despised, and a seeker of friends—such was he who uniformly 
spoke of himself as the Son of Man. 

To Jesus, indeed, the will of the Father was the all of life; 
but a very large part of that will was brotherhood: “Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself.” He made a household of the 
Twelve and lived among them. Their lack of insight and sym- 
pathy grieved him to the heart: “What, could ye not watch with 
me one hour?” Yet he loved them unto the end; while for the 
eternal future it was his prayer, “I will that where I am, they 
also may be with me,’ and his word of assurance: ‘That where 
I am, there ye may be also.’”” Having gone away, he came again 
in the glory of the resurrection, and was made known to them, 
as a foretoken of the heavenly life, in the breaking of bread, and 
in other social acts. When he spoke of the kingdom of God, 
whether present or future, he would sometimes use the old-time 
social figure of a table at which the redeemed were to sit down 
together, partaking of a common meal.’ 


John xiv. 23. *John xvii. 24. ®John xiv. 3. 
“Matt. xxii. 4; xxvi. 29; Luke xiv. 15; xxii. 30. 


20 Christianity as Organised 


It was in the spirit of the Master, therefore, that those whom 
he sent forth from immediate companionship with himself be- 
came seekers and promoters of fellowship. They would share 
with others the new life which they themselves had received, “the 
eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested” in 
his Son Jesus Christ. “That which we have seen and heard,” 
says one of them, “declare we unto you also, that ye also may 
have fellowship with us.” 

Accordingly the response of those upon whom such an appeal 
has power will be to enter into this feilowship of the new life. 
“This Jesus whom,” said Paul to the people of Thessalonica, “I 
proclaim unto you is the Christ. And some of them were per- 
suaded, and consorted with [pocexAnpeOyoov, cast in their lots 
with, were Divinely allotted to] Paul and Silas.”* It will al- 
ways be so. To win believers in Jesus is to make them brethren. 
They will cast in their lots with their fellow-Christians. 

It might be remarked, parenthetically, that even the meeting- 
places of the early Christians were distinctly promotive of fel- 
lowship. In our own day, the most sociable of all the meetings 
of a church are likely to be those that are held in the homes of 
fellow church members; and such of necessity were congrega- 
tional meetings for more than a hundred years of Christianity. 
There were no church edifices, and it was in the homes of their 
friends and brethren that those who had cast in their lots with one 
another as followers of Jesus habitually met together. 

But a far stronger figure is used. One of these same two 
apostles with whom the Thessalonian converts consorted made 
use of it in an epistle to Gentile Christians. Let us recall it: 
“That he might create in himself of twain one new man.”* Of 
what twain? Of two peoples that had long been at enmity, 
not indifferent nor simply alienated, but bitterly antagonistic. 
Think how the Jew had regarded the Gentile and the Gentile 
the Jew through ages and generations. But now the soul of the 
Jew and the soul of the Gentile were reconciled, brought into 


YY 


*1 John i. 3. ?Acts xvii. 3, 4. *Eph, ii. 15. 


Social Dependence: Admission 2i 


oneness of spirit and aim, in being both reconciled to God in 
Jesus Christ. It was even this twain that became one new man, 
At the cross the insurmountable barrier had been broken down. 
And such, in its crowning example, was the genesis of the Chris- 
tian Church. 

Unquestionably, then, the power of Christ was creative of a 
new individual. First of all, a new individual. But it was also 
creative of a new fellowship. Christians were not simply so 
many separate persons; they at once became a people, a race, a 
nation, a priesthood. So declares the first of Jesus’s confessing 
disciples: “Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy na- 
tion, a people for God’s own possession.’” 


2. SocIAL DEPENDENCE IN WORSHIP AND IN WoRK. 


In two things that might be particularly noted does this Chris- 
tian social dependence appear: in worship and in the extension 
of Christ’s kingdom. 

First, in worship. Now it is true that the soul must come to 
God alone. Otherwise it can hardly be said to know him at all. 
As truly as if there were no other being in the universe except 
the Creator and myself must I listen to his voice and speak to 
him in whose hand my life is. Nevertheless, all answers to 
prayer are not received by the solitary worshiper. Some are 
specifically promised to the worshiping assemblage. It may be 
a very small assemblage; but any real Christian communion will 
open the heart to receive a greater blessing from on high: “If 
two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heav- 
en.”* And no petition that is either unbelieving or unloving may 
hope to be heard.* “But tarry ye in the city,’ was the Master’s 
word, “until ye be clothed with power from on high;’”* and it 
was when “they were all together in one place” that the garment 
of power descended upon them. 

The Lord’s Supper also, the sacrament which the ever-living 


*r Pet. ii. o. *Matt. xviii. I9. ®Mark xi. 24, 25. *Luke xxiv. 49. 


22 Christianity as Organized 


Saviour has given us of trust and love toward himself, calls 
most truly and tenderly for trust and love toward each other. 
“Seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body; for 
we all partake of the one bread.’” 

Secondly. As in the case of spiritual receptivity in worship, 
so in that of effectiveness in extending Christ’s kingdom broth- 
erhood is needed. Are Christians to be good soldiers of Jesus 
Christ? The peculiar power of an army, as compared with any 
equal number of brave men, is in systematic cooperation. Are 
Christians coworkers with Christ for the redemption of the world? 
Good feeling, harmony, a common aim, the division of labor, will 
multiply the efficiency of the individual laborer many fold. “I 
beseech thee also, true yokefellow, help those women, for they 
labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and the rest 
of my fellow-workers.’* ‘And he called unto him the Twelve, 
and began to send them forth by two and two.’” 

There may be solitary workers, each doing what he can in his 
own line without contact with others. There may be competitive 
workers, each endeavoring to surpass others, oftentimes to their 
disadvantage. But the great body of the world’s work is done 
by associated workers, each depending on others and depended 
on by them, each assisting others and assisted by them. 

Need we be reminded that in Christianity this cooperative 
method, which has been illustrated from the beginning, must con- 
tinue unto the end? Cooperation is the method of the kingdom 
of God—here and we may believe hereafter. For let us consider: 
Is solitariness the law of the universe? Is competition? And 
what, on the other hand, shall be said of cooperation? 


3. THE CHuRCH IDEA IN THE ACTS AND THE EPISTLES. 


Social dependence, as illustrated thus in worship and in work, 
will help to explain the prominence of the Church idea in the 
books of the New Testament that follow the Gospels. For this 
idea is very prominent in these books. The very literary form 


47 (Con xe ay. ?Phil. iv. 3. ®Mark vi. 7. 


Social Dependence: Admission 23 


which most of them have taken is suggestive of it; they are not 
treatises, but letters written to be read aloud in congregations. 

Except as a social institution, Christianity could not have made 
an effective start or gathered its forces for subsequent progress 
and achievement. Therefore even in the apostolic period it must 
embody itself not only in persons but also in societies—‘“a city 
set on a hill.” 

Of course it is not simply that Christ's people should be con- 
gregated or made to live side by side in the same group by some 
external authority; for in such a case proximity might not prove 
to be helpfulness. The uniting pressure must come from within, 
like the informing and uniting life force of any organism. It 
must be a spirit of truth and love. The plants of a garden bed 
or the trees of the forest grow side by side, but instead of help- 
ing they hinder one another. A congregation of Jesus Christ 
must be organically—which is to say, vitally—interrelated; not 
like the collective plants in a garden bed, but like the several 
organs of the individual plant, which are each for all.and all for 
each. The man that has found his Father in heaven instinctively 
seeks his brother on earth; and the two brothers are to become 
one, mutually serviceable, in Christ. 

Many, it is true, are the sinful interferences, the misunderstand- 
ings, strifes, and envyings, that hinder and oftentimes destroy 
this unity of the Spirit. But the idea persists, and, in proportion 
as the Christianity professed is real, clothes itself in everyday 
fact. It is the ethical idea of “mutualism’’ glorified. ‘Bear ye 
one another’s burdens,” says Paul to his Galatian converts, and 
immediately illumines the precept with an interpretation of the 
teaching of Jesus, “and so fulfill the law of Christ.’ Even be- 
tween the chief of the apostles and the humblest Christian broth- 
er, it is a reciprocal service that is due: “I long to see you, 
that I with you may be comforted in you, each of us by the other’s 
faith, both yours and mine.’ Alike in the first age and in all 
after ages, the Church, so far as it has kept true to its heavenly 


SOMA) Felts OZ) 


24 Christianity as Organized 
calling, has been, in the highest sense known on earth, a mutual 
aid society. 

A mutual aid society? Truly so; but much more than that. 
Such a name does not go far enough within. The Church is a 
Christian life society. It has not merely a corporate existence, 
but a corporate life. And to this corporate life each individual 
member is to make his contribution, and from it to receive spir- 
itual quickening. Attend upon some congregation’s worship on 
the Sabbath day, be present at its social meetings, make acquaint- 
ance with its members, hear about its plans and undertakings, lis- 
ten to the sermons, take part in the work. Come thus into sym- 
pathetic contact with that Church. And you have thereby put 
yourself into contact with not simply an individual but a col- 
lective life. Disregarding whatever evil tempers may have in- 
truded to weaken or pollute it, what is it that you receive? A 
spirit of worship and service; a spirit of prayer, penitence, aspi- 
ration, effort, faith, hope, love, enterprise for the kingdom of 
God; the spirit of Christianity. When a church is organized in 
any community, it is this life that is organized. All may share 
it if they will. The Christian disciple will not shut himself off 
from its inflowing. Nor is there a Christian disciple but may add 
something to its volume and intensity. 


4. ORIGINAL AND LATER CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP. 


Now, for the maintenance of such a society in its integrity two 
economic regulations are necessary: There must be conditions of 
membership and the administration of discipline. 

First, there must be conditions of membership. Because the 
unfit member may prove a hindrance both to communion and serv- 
ice; for the closer the relationship, the greater the power either to 
benefit or to trouble, to make or to mar. 

Let us trace briefly the history of this regulation. Beginning 
with the apostolic age, we see at first not so much conditions of 
church membership as conditions of personal salvation. These 
conditions, expressed in a word, were faith in Jesus as the Christ. 
But this faith included repentance, and was professed in the rite 


Social Dependence: Adnussion 25 


of Christian baptism. If it be asked, then, who might be re- 
ceived into an apostolic church, the answer is: Those who were 
presumably in the way of salvation. Baptism, however, being 
the outward ordinance through which the profession was made, 
may be called the door of admission into this visible fellowship 
of Christ’s people. 

Moreover, was it not a door which any true teacher or preach- 
er of the gospel was authorized to open? Neither the Apostle to 
the Gentiles,” nor Philip (a distributer of church funds),’ nor 
Ananias (apparently what we should call a layman),° waited 
for any other authority for baptizing his converts than that under 
which he had been already sent forth with the word of life. Nor 
is there any evidence that after baptism the formal vote of a con- 
gregation or of a body of representative officers was necessary to 
admit the new believer into actual membership in a local church. 
The probability would certainly seem to be that, unless objection 
were raised, he was informally and gladly welcomed to commun- 
ion and cooperation with his brethren.* 

Of a course of probation or of catechetical instruction for 
church membership there is likewise no evidence. That in cer- 
tain instances, however, even in that day of the manifold gifts 
of the Spirit, and of apostolic oversight, such a course should 
have been required, cannot be declared impossible. 

In the sub-apostolic age we do find some specific preparation 


ote Cor 17: 2Acts ix. 10-19. SActs viii. 12. 

““\We have in the case of Paul avery interesting statement (Acts ix. 26), 
that ‘when he was come to Jerusalem he essayed to join himself to the dis- 
ciples, and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple; 
but Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles,’ etc. From this it 
would appear that there had to be application for membership, and that it 
was not always granted without some consideration in the case of doubtful 
persons. . . . And the right of passing upon members is distinctly im- 
plied . . . in Romans xiv. 1, where the Apostle exhorts the brethren to 
receive even those who are weak in the faith, provided, of course, their faith 
was genuine.” (Dargan, “Ecclesiology,” pp. 37-39.) But it is only through 
an extremely doubtful exegesis that the first-cited passage can be made to 
yield a case of application for membership, or the other a case of congre- 
gational voting. 


26 Christianity as Organized 


for reception through baptism into the Church. The candidate 
must be instructed, must show that he is convinced of the truths 
of the gospel, and must pray with fasting and confession of sin.” 

In the latter part of the third century, and especially in the 
fourth century, this preparation for church membership in the 
case of converts from non-Christian faiths, whether Jewish, 
pagan, or heretical, became very elaborate. The candidates were 
called catechumens, the name indicating that they were distinct- 
ively subjects of instruction. These instructed ones were divided 
into three classes: (1) the “hearers” (audientes), who were per- 
mitted to come into the congregation to hear the reading of 
the Scriptures and the preaching, but must then retire; (2) the 
“kneelers” ( genuflectentes), who, in addition to hearing the Scrip- 
tures and the sermon, might kneel and pray; (3) the “qualified” 
(competentes), who, having passed through the intervening 
stages, might offer themselves for baptism. 

These were now instructed in the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, 
the nature of the sacraments—indeed, it would seem, in a fairly 
complete body of doctrine; and this course of instruction having 
been given, they were received on profession of faith, through 
baptism, into the fellowship of the Church. The whole period of 
probation sometimes lasted two or three years; though much de- 
pended here upon the character of the candidate.” 

Now the spirit of evangelic freedom would pronounce the an- 
cient catechumenate too long-continued and too formal a process. 


1“But before the baptism let the baptizer fast, and the baptized, and what- 
ever others can; but thou shalt order the baptized to fast one or two weeks 
before.” (Didache, c. 7.) 

“As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is 
true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and 
to entreat God with fasting for the remission of their sins that are past, we 
praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there 
is water, and regenerated in the same manner in which we ourselves were re- 
generated.” (Justin Martyr, First Apol., c. 61.) 

2“T et him who is to be a catechumen be a catechumen for three years; but 
if any one be diligent, and have a good will to his business, let him be ad- 
mitted; for it is not the length of time but the course of life that is judged.” 
(Const. Apostol., Bk. VIII. c. 32.) 


Social Dependence: Admission 27 


It is difficult to see in it a picture of the good Shepherd bringing 
home his sheep that was lost. Let the adverse verdict stand. But 
let it be modified by the consideration that these catechumens 
were for the most part men and women who from childhood had 
been thoroughly imbued with the ideas and sentiments of pagan- 
ism, and who, experience had taught, should not without much 
care be admitted to the full privileges of the Christian house- 
hold. In fact, it is a similar probation in which many applicants 
for admission into the Church are held by Christian missionaries 
of the present day.’ 

Let it also be borne in mind that the baptism which closed the 
long period of disciplinary waiting must have been profoundly 
impressive. No wonder that it should have been spoken of in 
the pictorial language of the time as the new birth of the soul. 

But this preparatory catechumenate was not perpetuated. Aft- 
er the sixth century it seems to have fallen into a disuse that 
gradually became universal. This was due to the magical and 
worldly conception of the Church that was prevalent under Con- 
stantine and his successors. As the ministry became more and 
more completely a priesthood, less emphasis was laid upon the 
patient and difficult work of teaching; and, moreover, the profes- 
sion of the state religion came to be little more than a politico- 
religious form. Accordingly baptism was administered not only 
to all infants, but without moral or theological requirements to 
people generally. Whole tribes of barbarians, for instance, were 
brought out of heathenism into the Church, with no course of 
preparatory instruction, and with a baptism that was practically 
forced upon them. 

Multitudinism gained the ascendency. Wherever Christianity 
was organized, the whole population was regarded as legitimate- 
ly included in its membership. From the too protracted proba- 
tion of the catechumenate, the ecclesiastical pendulum swung to 


*J have heard a missionary to China say, “The trouble now is not so 
much to get people into the Church as to keep them out”—till they should 
be sufficiently instructed and should give evidence of a genuine Christian 
faith. 


28 Christianity as Organized 


the opposite extreme of not only no probation at all (as appar- 
ently in the New Testament period) but of no proper require- 
ments of any kind for admission to the Christian brotherhood. 
Indeed, where did the Christian brotherhood—which in every 
age is the true Church—exist, except here and there in little com- 
panies of elect souls? The Church as organized had become the 
sacerdotal clergy, appointed to put the souls of all men into the 
way of salvation, and to keep them there, chiefly through the 
merit of good works and the impartation of sacramental grace. 

In the Eastern and the Roman Church this same theory has 
been practiced, as far as circumstances are favorable, unto the 
present day. 

In the State Churches of Protestantism also multitudinism, 
more or less modified by evangelic doctrine, is the generally prev- 
alent theory. Where Ritualism prevails, the main stress is laid 
upon baptism (supposed to be a regenerative rite), catechetical 
instruction, and confirmation, as conditions of personal salvation 
and of church membership. But in the Free Evangelical Church- 
es the New Testament idea of a church as a congregation of be- 
lievers unto salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ is distinctly set 
forth; and a credible profession of faith is the condition of mem- 
bership—as we shall see in a few moments. 


5. CoNDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP IN PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 


As to who shall decide upon the candidate’s fitness and au- 
thorize his reception into membership, the law greatly differs in 
different Protestant Churches. In some, the authority rests with 
the diocesan bishop; in some, with the local pastor; in some, with 
the session of elders; in some, with the church council consisting 
of pastor, elders, and deacons; in some, with the assembled con- 
gregation. This diversity of administration illustrates the gen- 
eral character of the different ecclesiastical polities of which it 
forms a part—namely, the Protestant Episcopal, the Methodist 
Episcopal, the Presbyterian, the Lutheran, the Congregational. 
Theoretically the diversity is as wide as can easily be imagined; 
but practically it is inconsiderable. It would probably be a rare 


Social Dependence: Admussion 29 


instance in which a person received into the Church under any 
one of these forms of administration would have been refused 
admission under any other. 

As to the conditions of membership, taking the same five evan- 
gelical communions as examples, the similarity almost amounts 
to sameness. These conditions are represented by the profes- 
sions and vows required at the time of reception into the Church. 
What are they? In the Protestant Episcopal Church, to renew 
the “promise and vow” made at baptism—namely, the renuncia- 
tion of all sin, belief of the “Articles of the Faith, as contained 
in the Apostles’ Creed,” and the obedient keeping of God’s holy 
commandments.’ In the Methodist Episcopal Church, to renew 
this same baptismal covenant, to confess Christ as the personal 
Saviour, to profess belief in Christian doctrine as set forth in the 
“Articles of Religion,” to keep the “Rules” of the Church, to 
observe the Christian ordinances, to contribute to the support of 
the gospel and the benevolent enterprises of the Church, to pro 
mote “the welfare of the brethren and the advancement of the 
Redeemer’s kingdom.’’”* In the Presbyterian Church, to “receive 
and profess the Christian faith,’ to repent and “trust in the 
mercy of God which is in Jesus Christ,” to “promise in his 
strength to lead a sober, righteous, and godly life,” to observe 
the means of grace, to submit to the authority of the Church, to 
“continue in the peace and fellowship of the people of God.’ In 
the Lutheran Church, to profess the Apostles’ Creed and to an- 
swer affirmatively the question: “Do you promise conscientiously 
to use the means of grace, to be obedient to the order and dis- 
cipline of the congregation, and to be faithful members of the 
Evangelical Lutheran Church?’ In the Congregational Church- 


> 66 


*The Book of Common Prayer, “Order of Confirmation,” ‘“‘Ministration of 
Baptism to Such as Are of Riper Years.” 

®The Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, “Reception into Full 
Membership.” 

®*The Book of Common Worship, “Order for the Administration of Bap- 
tism to Adults and Reception to the Lord’s Supper,” “Order for the Con- 
firmation of Religious Vows and Reception to the Lord’s Supper,” 

“Forms for Ministerial Acts, “Confirmation,” 


30 Christianity as Organized 


es (according to the recommendation of the “Council Manual”), 
to profess the Apostles’ Creed, and the system of truth held by the 
Congregational Churches, to repent of sin, to follow Christ “in 
all things, to walk with his disciples in love, and to live for his 
glory,” to adopt the covenant of the Church, help to sustain all its 
worship and work, and to live in its fellowship.’” 

But these conditions may be more briefly, and not less sig- 
nificantly, expressed as the personal confession of Christ. “Ev- 
ery one who shall confess me before men’’—it is the man, the 
woman, the youth, the child described in these words of the Son 
of Man that is accepted for admission into the visible fellowship 
of his people. And the content of the Name here confessed may 
be taken, according to the Church’s apprehension of its meaning 
from the beginning, as that of the authoritative Teacher, the 
supreme Master, the sinless Example, the atoning Saviour. To 
demand a truly greater confession would be impossible; yet to 
substitute a less would be to set aside the substance of the evan- 
gelic faith. 

‘It is, then, with this confession on his lips that the seeker of 
Christian fellowship and guidance stands knocking at the door 
of a congregation of Christ’s people. 


1The Council Manual, “Form for the Reception of Members.” 


TE, 
SOCIAL DEPENDENCE: DISCIPLINE. 


It would be no matter of surprise if one should feel the thrill 
of a new gladness or the awe of a hitherto unrecognized obliga- 
tion on his entrance into the congregational fellowship of the 
Christian life. With the realization of what this fellowship sig- 
nifies there will surely come to him some such experience. For 
the congregation, however small or obscure, whose door is opened 
to receive him is included in the visible, confessing Congregation 
of those who have truly been gathered together in Jesus’s name 
in all the world. If there be but two or three who meet in that 
Name, he who unites with them becomes a member—yes, a mem- 
ber of “the General Assembly and Church of the firstborn, who 
are enrolled in heaven.’” That is the holy communion in which 
he holds his membership. For as Paul, an apostle: of Jesus 
Christ, greeted the Corinthian Christians as “the Church of God 
which is at Corinth,’ in like language may the local Christian 
congregation be addressed anywhere and at any time. It is not 
simply a church, but the Church of God—a genuine part, rep- 
resenting the whole. 

But it is with this local congregation that the newly received 
communicant has immediate relationship. They receive him; and 
not only unto brotherly association with themselves, but unto 
watch-care and Christian government as well. 

Admission under the conditions of membership is followed by 
the administration of discipline. 

It is this economic regulation that here remains for us to con- 
sider. And we shall have to begin by making these several dis- 
tinctions: Discipline may be either formative or corrective, and 
both these kinds of discipline may be either personal or official. 
Let us see. 


*Heb. xit, 23. am Gorse) 


(31) 


32 Christianity as Organized 


1. FORMATIVE DISCIPLINE—PERSONAL, OFFICIAL. 


The older meaning of the word (discere, discipulus, disciplina) 
is to teach, to nurture, to train, and to oversee with this educative 
purpose.” Exemplifications of it are conspicuous in the home and 
the school as well as in the Church. Teaching, nurturing, train- 
ing—in a word, education—this is formative discipline. The 
young Christian, therefore, entering the communion of a true 
and well-directed church of Christ is admitted to the confidence 
and affection of fellow-disciples, to a place at the Lord’s Sup- 
per, to organized opportunities of usefulness and influence—and 
to something more. He is admitted to a Christian watch-care 
that is distinctly educative. 

Is discipline a forbidding word? It isa word of power. Com- 
pare an undisciplined with a disciplined eye or hand or appetite 
or intellect or spirit—in a word, an undisciplined with a disci- 
plined life. It will show the difference between savagery and 
civilization, weakness and strength, crudity and economy; be- 
tween the failure of even the well-endowed mind when it works 
unsteadily and unskillfully, “without a conscience or an aim,” 
and the strong, steady step of achievement. Truly, therefore, 
might the ancient “Wisdom of Solomon” declare that “her 
[Wisdom’s] true beginning is desire of discipline, and the care 
for discipline is love of her.” 

Nor should we think of the discipline of the soul in the Chris- 
tian congregation as necessarily a matter of official or organized 
procedure. It is, first of all, not official in any sense whatever, 
but purely personal. Such, beyond doubt, is the impression that 
one would receive from the New Testament. Church members 
must always and by all means watch over and, as need may be, 
admonish one another, that they may both encourage the good 
and cure the evil." They must show a spirit of mutual forbear- 
ance and forgiveness: “How oft shall my brother sin against me, 
and I forgive him?” “Until seventy times seven.” If one be 


1In the one instance of the use of the word in the Authorized Version of 
the Bible—Job xxxvi. I0—it means instruction. 
* Com fil. 160; 1° Dess.)-v. 04,14, 


Social Dependence: Discipline 33 


overtaken in a fault, his brethren are not rudely to thrust him 
out of the Church, but to restore him in a spirit of meekness, re- 
membering each his own liability to the power of temptation.’ 
Christians shall confess their sins one to another, and pray one 
for another, that they may be forgiven and made spiritually 
whole. Each is to treat the rest with a genuinely Christlike 
kindness; that is the ideal. “Receive ye one another, even as 
Christ also received you, to the glory of God.’”* 

But formative discipline may also be official. It is ministered 
by the Church through regularly constituted Christian ordinances 
—through preaching, teaching, hymns, prayers, sacraments—and 
in pastoral care and leadership. 


2. CORRECTIVE DISCIPLINE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT PERIOD— 
PERSONAL, OFFICIAL. 


But in the case of unfaithfulness and disobedience, the neglect 
or violation of law, there will ensue in every well-ordered society 
some ministration of reproof, restraint, or penalty, which is cor- 
rective discipline. Makers of discord and scandal, grieving in- 
stead of serving their fellow-members of the Church,’ must be 
reformed, or, when nothing else will avail, put away. 

This, too, may be personal, not official, action. Christian 
brethren are enjoined even to withdraw themselves from one who 
walks disorderly, that he may be made ashamed, at the same time 
not counting him as an enemy, but admonishing him as a 
brother.” 


4Gal. vi. 1. ?James v. 16. 

*Rom. xv. 7. 

“We, then, the members of this Church, do affectionately welcome you 
into this household of faith. We pledge to you our sympathy, our help, and 
our prayers that you may evermore increase in the knowledge and love of 
God.” (Form for the Reception of Members in the Congregational Churches.) 

“Brethren, I commend to your love and care these persons whom we this 
day recognize as members of the Church of Christ. Do all in your power 
to increase their faith, confirm their hope, and perfect them in love.” (Charge 
to the congregation, at the reception of members into the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, South.) 

“t Cor. v. 6,7. °2 Thess. iii. 14,15. Cf. Didache, cc. II. 7; IV. 3; XV. 3. 


3 


34 Christianity as Organized 


Sometimes, however, special methods must be employed. So 
our Lord himself marked out the course to be pursued by an in- 
jured brother toward the one who has trespassed against him, 
and shows no repentant spirit." It is evident that the case here 
supposed is personal rather than official. A brother has been 
wronged by another; he must try personally and privately to 
bring him to a better mind, so as not indeed to vindicate his own 
rights or gain some advantage for himself, but to gain his broth- 
er. Failing in this, he is to call for the assistance of one or two 
other peacemakers, and in the last resort, not sitting as a judge 
in his own cause, to call the whole local church to his aid. And 
in case of final failure it is not said that the offender shall be ex- 
communicated, but that he shall no longer be recognized as a 
Christian brother by the one against whom he has sinned. Is 
excommunication here fairly implied? Perhaps so; but that 
which is explicitly enjoined is: “Let him be unto thee as the 
Gentile and the publican.’ 

Then, too, there will be official cases. For to commit a wrong 
against any member of a church—say to slander him or refuse 
him the payment of a just debt—is to wrong the church, just as 
to trespass upon the rights of any citizen is to trespass against 
the State; and it may be the duty of the church as such to take 
cognizance of the act. Besides there are sins—such, for exam- 
ple, as drunkenness, profanity, or neglect of Christian ordinances 
—that are not committed against any particular person, and yet, 
because of their general evil influence, must be dealt with by the 
Church. Now these strictly official cases seem also to be recog- 
nized by our Lord, and the authority to deal with them declared: 
“Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth 
shall be bound in heaven, and what things soever ye shall loose 
on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 


*Matt. xviii. 15-20. 

2TIt by no means follows that the cast-off offender must be treated with 
unkindness or scorn. The law of Christ has no such limitation. He must 
still be the subject of pitying and ministering love. What was Jesus’s treat- 
ment of Gentiles and publicans? 


Social Dependence: Discipline 35 


This deeply significant word of Jesus was spoken first to Simon 
Peter at the time of the Great Confession, when the power of 
binding and loosing was also called the power of the “keys.’” It 
is now spoken to the Twelve,” and, as the context strongly sug- 
gests, to any true Christian congregation. Also, on the evening 
of the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to “the Eleven gathered to- 
gether, and them that were with them,” and said to these as- 
sembled disciples: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins 
ye forgive they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye 
retain, they are retained.” Now it seems evident that this au- 
thority to declare the forgiveness or the retention of sins is the 
same as the authority to “bind” or “loose,” or the power of the 
“keys.” And we cannot fairly assume that it was committed 
only to the ten Apostles present at the time, and not also to 
“them that were with them.” It seems to have been committed 
to the assembled disciples, the Christian believers gathered to- 
gether in the Master’s name, in the midst of whom, according to 
his own word of promise, he himself was standing. 

Indeed, who was Simon Peter? A Christian, the first confess- 
ing Christian. And we have the best reason to believe that it was 
to him as such, and not as some one receiving a peculiar or 
priestly authority, that Jesus spoke. Who were the Apostles? 
Confessing Christians, the first Christian church; and it was to 
them likewise, as such, that this great word of our Lord was 
uttered. It is to the Christian congregation, or even to the in- 
dividual Christian, so far as that congregation or that Christian 
is in the real fellowship of knowledge and holy love with Jesus 
Christ, that the keys of the kingdom of heaven are given. 

But what are we to understand more particularly by the terms 
“binding” and “loosing?” They were already current in the 
rabbinical dialect, and in our Lord’s use of them may be taken 
to mean, first, the interpreting of the will of God as to what acts 
are forbidden (‘“‘bound,” or the “key” used to exclude them), and 
what are permitted (“loosed,” or the “key” used to admit them) ; 


Matt. xvi. 19. ?Matt, xviii, 18, 20. *Cf. Luke xxiv. 13-49; John xx. 19-23. 


36 Christianity as Organized 


and, secondarily, the applying of such interpretation in excluding 
persons from the privileges of church membership or retaining 
them in the enjoyment of these privileges. And as to this in- 
terpretation of moral acts and its disciplinary application Jesus 
teaches that, so far as an inspired Apostle or the united company 
of Apostles or Christian people gathered for worship and service, 
are God’s representative, being guided by the Christ himself, who 
is with them and in them, their teachings and decisions will be 
absolutely true. What is done by them here and now will be an 
expression of the laws of the kingdom of heaven. 

Shall we repeat this familiar bit of exegesis in a single sen- 
tence? The power of the “keys,” “binding” and “loosing,” the 
retention and the forgiveness of sins—three names for the same 
thing—as a Christian prerogative, is first interpretative, and sec- 
ondarily disciplinary: as interpretative, it interprets and declares 
the conditions under which the sinner is condemned or forgiven, 
according to the gospel; as disciplinary, it applies this interpreta- 

tion in the actual condemnation, even though it take the extreme 
- form of expulsion of a member of the Church or in his reten- 
tion in good standing in its membership. 

It may be objected that this power of the “keys’’ implies that 
the Christian congregation is infallible in judgment, which it is 
impossible to believe. But the answer is not difficult. The power 
of the “keys” implies infallibility of judgment no more than the 
assurance given by our Lord in immediate connection with it— 
“Tf two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heav- 
en’’—implies that these two consenting disciples on their knees 
are infallible in their judgment as to what petitions are in ac- 
cord with the Father’s will. No more than does Jesus’s assertion, 
“He that receiveth you receiveth me,” implies that his messen- 
gers are absolutely one and the same with himself. No more 
than the apostolic word, “Whosoever is begotten of God doeth 
no sin, . . . and he cannot sin,’” implies that a child of 


Matt. x. 40. ®t John iii. 9. 


Social Dependence: Discipline 37 


God is wholly and necessarily a sinless being. No more than 
the same Apostle’s assurance to the “little children” to whom he 
is writing, “Ye need not that any one teach you,’ implies that 
these young Christians were perfect in wisdom and in need of 
no instruction from any human source. So far as the two agree- 
ing disciples “abide in Him,” their prayer will be offered ac- 
cording to the Father’s will and shall receive its answer. So far 
as the messenger of Christ “abides in Him,” he is one in spirit 
and aim with the message-giver. So far as the regenerated soul 
“abides in Him,” it will be kept from all sin. So far as spirit- 
ually minded men and women, even though they be but “little 
children” in Christ, “abide in Him,” the tuition of the one Teach- 
er will be theirs, and will suffice. In like manner, then, so far as 
a Christian congregation “abides in Him,” its prohibitions and 
permissions will be the very words of Christ himself; so far as 
it is taught of the Spirit, its judgment will represent the mind 
of the Spirit. “Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye 
forgive, they are forgiven unto them.” 

Now it is chiefly with the secondary meaning of this word of 
Jesus that we are here concerned; not the interpretative, but the 
disciplinary power of the “keys.” An instructive illustration of 
it is given in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.* Here was a case 
of flagrant immorality, for which expulsion from the Christian 
brotherhood was the penalty. The twofold object of the act of 
expulsion was to protect the Church from the leaven of a cor- 
rupting example, and to restore the offender. The result justified 
the painful procedure.” And the Apostle’s spirit of mingled 
wisdom, tenderness, and firmness is still to be followed as a shin- 
ing example to every administrator of ecclesiastical discipline in 
any age. 

This expulsion was the act of the entire Corinthian Church, its 
founder and chief pastor being present in “spirit” and directing 
the trial. “Do not ye [ye as well as I] judge them that are 
within?’”* 


17 John ii. 27. Sy Cony vaOn Son 2) Con 1O-nt: 
ar (Cor. vy Sr Conuyvauie, wei 2u@orliniG: 


38 Christianity as Organised 


Does it follow that in all the New Testament churches the ex- 
pulsion of a member was in every instance the immediate act 
of the assembled congregation—the pastor or pastors simply 
presiding at the trial? This would be too wide an inference. In- 
deed, such injunctions as those of the Apostle Paul to Timothy 
and Titus indicate a larger pastoral authority in cases of disci- 
pline than that of the mere president of a congregational meet- 
ing: “Against an elder receive not an accusation, except at the 
mouth of two or three witnesses ;’”* “A man that is heretical | fac- 
tious] after a first and second admonition refuse.’” 

There is also a different sort of corrective discipline, as set 
forth by Paul to the Corinthians, that should not be overlooked— 
that, namely, of arbitration. Suppose two brethren in Corinth 
to have fallen into a serious misunderstanding. One, for in- 
stance, claims the payment of a debt which the other does not 
acknowledge as due. What shall be done? The civil courts are 
open and ready to hear the cause. But the Apostle would not 
have it taken there. It were a shameful thing that Christians’ 
causes should be tried and judged before a pagan tribunal. Bet- 
ter to “take wrong,” better tc “be defrauded.’’ And if there be 
a dispute, it should be settled within the church itself. Let an 
arbitrator be appointed, the wisest and most reputable in the con- 
gregation; and let his decision be accepted as final: “Is it so, that 
there cannot be found among you one wise man, who shall be 
able to decide between his brethren, but brother goeth to law with 
brother, and that before unbelievers?” . 

Now in Christendom, it is obvious, the circumstances of such 
a case are markedly different from those of the little Christian 
brotherhood in pagan Corinth; and this may call for some modi- 
fication in applying the apostolic principle. But the principle 
itself is as true and authoritative now as then, in Christendom 
as in heathendom. Will not any right-minded Christians, ancient 
or modern, be disposed to bring their difficulty to their own breth- 
ren for settlement rather than to the civil courts ?* 


17 Tim. v. 19. *Titus iii. 10. ®t ‘Cor, vi. 6. 
“Cf. Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1906), {fl 302-304. 


ot —s 


Social Dependence: Discipline 39 


3. CORRECTIVE DISCIPLINE IN Post-APosTOLIc TIMEs. 


In the early Church corrective discipline was a very prominent 
function. Here, too, it was, first of all, not official but personal. 
“Tet us then also pray,” says Clement of Rome, “for those who 
have fallen into any sin, that meekness and humility may be given 
to them.’ As to official discipline, almost no information has 
been transmitted from the sub-apostolic period.” Yet a genera- 
tion or two later it may be seen in vigorous operation.* It was 
felt to be an indispensable object that the peace and purity of the 
Church should be preserved. The Christian community must be 
kept from contamination by the corrupt pagan society that sur- 
rounded it, a stainless light, a salt full of savor.* 


*Clement continues: “Let us receive correction, beloved, on account of 
which no one should feel displeased. Those exhortations by which we ad- 
monish one another are both good [in themselves] and highly profitable, for 
they tend to unite us to the will of God.” (To the Corinthians, c. 56.) 

Cf. the Didache, c. 15: “And reprove one another, not in anger but in 
peace, as ye have it in the Gospel; but to every one that acts amiss against 
another, let no one speak, nor let him hear aught from you till he repent.” 
Which, however, is not the New Testament teaching (2 Thess. iii. 14, 15). 

*The following passages represent almost all the direct information on the 
subject: 

“Submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to 
repent. . . . For it is better for you that ye should occupy a humble but 
honorable place in the flock of Christ, than that, being highly exalted, ye 
should be cast out from the hope of his people.” (Clement of Rome, c. 57.) 

“Who are those whom they reject and cast away? These are they who 
have sinned, and wish to repent. On this account they have been thrown 
from the tower, because they will yet be useful in the building if they re- 
pent.” (Hermas, Vis. III., c. 5.) 

*“For with a great gravity is the task of judging carried on among us, as 
befits those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God; and you have 
the most notable example of judgment to come when any one has sinned so 
grievously as to require his:severance from us in prayer, in the congregation, 
and in all sacred intercourse. The tried men of our elders preside over us, 
obtaining that honor not by purchase but by established authority.” (Ter- 
tullian, Apol., c. 39.) 

“Tertullian makes discipline one strand of the threefold cord that binds 
the Christians of his day together: “We Christians are one body, knit to- 
gether by a common religious profession, by a unity of discipline, and by the 
bond of a common vow.” (Apology, 39.) 

Cf. Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” pp. 69-72. 


40 Christianity as Organized 


In the administration of discipline, so far as the records show, 
the sovereignty of the congregation as a whole was maintained. 
The proper officers must preside, but the infliction of punish- 
ment was not their act alone; it was congregational.’ 

Two principal grades of ecclesiastical penalty were pronounced 
against offenders. The lesser excommunication was inflicted for 
the less heinous sins, which came to be designated as “venial.” 
It excluded from the sight of the celebration of the Lord’s Sup- 
per.” 

The greater excommunication was inflicted for the more hein- 
ous sins, such as theft, blasphemy, adultery, idolatry, murder, 
which came to be called “mortal; and with these were classed 
heresy and schism. It excluded from attendance at all church 
services and even from ordinary social intercourse with the faith- 
ful. On repentance, however, properly shown by prayers, tears, 
fasting, almsdeeds, avoidance of sins, for a reasonable length of 
time—one, two, six, even twenty years—the outcast might be 
restored to communion.”* 

But there was one exception. Relapse into idolatry was felt 
to be a sin of so great turpitude as not to be pardonable by the 
Church. Even though it were committed, which was likely to be 
the case, under stress of severe persecution, in the face of torture 
and death, and even though the offender should show unmis- 
takable signs of repentance, he was no more to approach the 
Lord’s table. He could, indeed, be received as a catechumen, but 
not asa communicant. God might forgive him; the Church could 
not. 


*Note again Tertullian, Apology, c. 39. 

*An indication of the origin of this penalty appears as early as the Didache 
(c. 14): “If any have a quarrel with his fellow, let him not join you [in the 
celebration of the Lord’s Supper] until they are reconciled.” 

®Might he be restored after a second lapse? According to some teaching 
of the age, he could not. “If any one is tempted by the devil, and sins after 
that great and holy calling in which the Lord has called his people to ever- 
lasting life, he has opportunity to repent but once. But if he should sin 
frequently after this, and then repent, to such a man his repentance will be 
of no avail; for with difficulty will he live.’ (Hermas, Pastor, “Command- 
ments,” IV., 3.) 


Social Dependence: Discipline 4I 


However, this rule, too, admitted of one exception. In some 
churches at least it was held that if a trusted prophetic teacher, 
a martyr (a Christian who had suffered tortures for the faith, 
and had not recanted), or a confessor (a Christian who had been 
brought to trial but not tortured, and had proved faithful), should 
declare it to be God’s will that the penitent be restored, this 
might be done. The word of the Lord, through the mouth of 
one thus empowered by the Spirit of truth to utter it, might open, 
even to the penitent idolater, the door of readmission into the 
Christian fold.* 

I have been speaking here of the second century and the earlier 
years of the third. About the middle of the third century this 
question of the restoration of “lapsed’’ Christians presented it- 
self in an extremely acute form, especially in the city of Car- 
thage. In fact, it here reached its culminating point, and was 
settled forever. It was the time of the great Decian persecu- 
tion (249-251). Many Christians—perhaps more than half of 
the Carthaginian Church—had sought to purchase safety by dis- 
honor. Some participated in the pagan sacrifices; some bribed 
the proper officials to give them a written statement to the effect 
that they had so participated. Their hearts had failed them; the 
bitterness of death was too dreadful to be voluntarily endured 
even for Christ’s sake; and so they denied their Lord. But ere 
long a goodly number of these recreants heartily repented of their 
apostasy. What should they do to get back into the Church? In 
the prisons were confessors not a few, standing fast in their 
integrity. To these, therefore, went the penitents and begged for 
letters recommending their restoration to church fellowship. And 


*Some, not able to find this peace in the Church, have been used to seck 
it from the imprisoned martyrs. And so you ought to have it dwelling with 
you, and to cherish it, and to guard it, that you may be able perhaps to 
bestow it upon others. (Tertullian, “To the Martyrs,” I.) 

“They [martyrs] absolved all, but bound none.” (Letter from Gaul, quot- 
ed by Eusebius, H. E., Bk. V., ii, 5. See also Bk. V., xviii, 7, in which 
it is scoffngly asked concerning certain pretenders, whether the “prophet” 
forgives the sins of the “martyr,” or vice versa.) 


42 Christianity as Organized 


some were admitted to the Lord’s table on such recommenda- 
tions. 

But through the determined efforts of the chief ecclesiastical 
statesman of the age, Thascius Cecilius Cyprian, bishop of Car- 
thage, this practice was discontinued. The restoration of the 
lapsed was declared to be too serious a matter to be decided by 
the mere word of kind-hearted and importuned martyrs or con- 
fessors. A long and severe probation for the renewal of church 
membership should be required; and the office bearers were the 
proper persons to decide all such cases.” 

But this is nothing more than would be expected when it is re- 
membered that the power of the office bearers, and especially of 
the bishops, in the churches generally, had been increasing 
through the years. The bishop was coming to be universally re- 
garded as a priest, and thereby, as well as for other imaginary 
reasons, entitled to the exercise of absolute governing authority. 
Accordingly the whole matter of the restoration of excommuni- 
cated persons to membership in the Church, whatever the offense 
for which they had been excommunicated, fell into the hands of 
the priest-pastor, or bishop. 

And this restoration of penitent backsliders now became a very 
elaborate process. It was similar to the process of reception to 
membership through the catechumenate, though more severe. 
Outcasts must do penance by abstaining from pleasant things and 
by doing good works, both which observances were supposed to 
be meritorious—chiefly by fasting and almsgiving. But, in addi- 
tion to this, they must do public penance by appearing as dis- 
tressed penitents before the congregation and making open con- 
fession of their sins. There was thus developed the system of. 
Penitents’ Stations. Penitents must occupy four stations on their 


1It was against this official as opposed to a prophetic absolution that Ter- 

tullian, who had become a Montanist, protested: “Exhibit therefore even now 

to me, apostolic sir, prophetic evidences, that I may recognize your divine 

virtue, and vindicate to yourself the power of remitting such mortal sins. 

The Church, it is true, will forgive sins; but it will be the Church 

of the Spirit, by means of a spiritual man, not the Church which consists of 
a number of bishops.” (Tertullian, “On Modesty,” XXTI.) 


Social Dependence: Discipline 43 


wav back to fellowship with their brethren in the Church. And 
they were divided accordingly into four classes: (1) The “mourn- 
ers,’ who were permitted to stand just outside the church door, 
clad in mourning garments, but not to enter; (2) the “hearers,” 
who might stand within, so as to hear the sermon and the Scripture 
reading; (3) the “kneelers,” who might enter the church and take 
a kneeling posture; (4) the “co-standers,’’ who might take their 
places standing with the rest of the congregation.” 

At the end of this course of penitential observances, the re- 
turning backslider must make confession of his sin before the 
congregation. For as yet confession was apparently not even 
thought of as an auricular, or private, practice; it was public— 
made not in the ear of any one man, but to the whole assembly 
of Christ’s people. Then the pastor would lay his hands on the 
penitent’s head with a prayer for the blessing of God upon him, 
the congregation would greet him with the kiss of reconciliation, 
and he was thus restored to the communion of the Church. 


4. CORRECTIVE DISCIPLINE IN MEDIEVAL TIMES. 


The next stage of development, which we are forced to char- 
acterize as a still further departure from “the simplicity and the 
purity that is toward Christ,’ was in the line of multitudinism 
and sacerdotalism, as in the case of the conditions of membership. 
That is to say, when everybody was received into the Church, 
which now became practically indistinguishable from the world, 
and when unapproachably above the people rose the priest, wheth- 
er bishop or presbyter, with the magical powers that had super- 
seded the New Testament offices of ministration, the method of 
discipline that gradually came to be adopted was that of private 
confession and penance. By the close of the eighth century pub- 
lic penance had been completely discarded, except in the case of 


The observance of the Penitents’ Stations, beginning in the early part of 
the fourth century, continued in the East for about two hundred years, and 
in the West perhaps twice as long. Its decline was gradual, but cannot be 
accurately traced. (See Smith and Cheatham’s “Dictionary of Christian An- 
tiquities,” Art. Penitence.) 


44 Christianity as Organized 


some very atrocious crime. The priest in the confessional pre- 
scribed the meritorious works to be performed or sufferings to 
be endured for the expiation of the sins confessed. 

Fasts, alms, and prayers were the commonest forms of pen- 
ance. As to how long the penance must be undergone, the time 
varied all the way from a few days to a lifetime. 

Lingering a moment upon almsgiving, as one of these forms 
of penance, we might ask as to its effect upon the recipients. No 
doubt it would increase the amount of alms. But, on the other 
hand, it would tend to cause indifference in the mind of the giver 
as to whether the alms would really benefit the recipient or not. 
They might encourage him in habits of idleness or vice; they 
might pauperize him; and still the giver’s object—certainly his 
primary object—would be accomplished all the same. Because he 
did not give primarily, if at all, for the sake of the poor man but 
for his own sake, to atone for his sins. He gave for the sake of 
the merit of the act itself; and so the mere giving, apart from 
any consideration of its effect upon the recipient, was sufficient. 
The tendency would certainly not be toward a wise and truly 
helpful administration of Christian beneficence. 

I have just said that the confessional, as a method of disci- 
pline, was adopted gradually. The successive steps in its adoption 
were such as these: At first the penitent would come voluntarily 
to the priest, as a religious instructor, to learn what penance 
must be done in expiation of his sins. But in order to obtain 
this information it was necessary for him to tell what his sins 
were; he must needs make confession of them; and this was the 
origin of the confessional. 

Now after the assigned penance had been performed, the priest 
would restore the penitent to the communion of the Church, and 
would also, laying hands upon his head, pray over him the prayer 
of absolution: ‘““The Lord absolve thee.” 

We are to observe, then, that during this period the priest did 
not undertake to forgive the penitent or to assure him of God’s 
forgiveness, just as the Church did not undertake to do it in 
the preceding period. He simply reconciled him to the Church, 


Social Dependence: Discipline 4S 


assuring him of its forgiveness, and solemnly prayed that he 
might be forgiven of God. 

Let us make sure that we do not blur this distinction. It is 
the distinction between a crime and a sin. The same act, as we 
know, may be both—as committed against the community a 
crime, as committed against God a sin. The civil community, 
for instance, may punish and it may also pardon the man who 
acts the thiei—may pardon him the crime. Has the court sent 
him to prison? The governor, who, equally with the court, rep- 
resents the community, may restore him to freedom. So like- 
wise with the ecclesiastical community and its members. The 
church member, for instance, who has acted the thief is guilty 
of a crime against the Church; and the Church may punish him, 
and it may also pardon him the crime. But it cannot pardon him 
the sin. It may indeed declare to him the conditions of pardon, 
and may pray God to forgive him; but it cannot forgive the 
wrong which he has perpetrated against God himself. 

“To whom ye forgive anything,” says the Apostle Paul, “I 
forgive also.’”* But it is plain enough from the context what 
this forgiveness by the Corinthian Church and its chief pastor 
was. Not the blotting out of the expelled offender’s sin, but the 
forgiveness of his crime, the receiving of him back into the com- 
munion of Christ’s people from which he had been excluded. 

It was thus, therefore, that the Church forgave offenders dur- 
ing these earlier centuries. But in the course of the Middle Age 
the prayer of the priest for the penitent’s pardon gave place, in 
the Western Church (though not in the Eastern), to the author- 
itative declaration of forgiveness by the priest as the representa- 
tive of God himselfi—“J absolve thee.” Thus it was declared and 
taught that both the penitent’s relation to the Church and his re- 
lation to God were changed by the word of the priest from that 
of condemnation to that of forgiveness. Besides, the absolution 
came to be pronounced not after the penance had been done, but 
at the time of confession.” 


12 Cor. ii. I0. 
?By Leo the Great (440-460) private confession was legalized. In the 


46 Christiamty as Organised 


And still more, the expiatory works of penance might be done 
by one person for another. So the debt was paid, it mattered not 
by whom.” For have we not been bidden—such was the argu- 
ment of Thomas Aquinas—to “bear one another’s burdens ?” 

Can there be any mistake as to the nature of the process here 
going on? It is one instance, among many, of the ecclesiastical 
corruption of Christianity. Organization, untrue to its idea and 
its name, instead of furnishing the religion of Jesus with organs 
for the expression of its life in the world, is found reacting upon 
it, Oppressing it, substituting it. Confession to God, says the 
Scripture, is the way of salvation; and the confession of fellow- 
Christians one to another, with prayer for one another’s healing, 
is helpful to the soul. Confession to a priest, says Sacerdotalism, 
is the way of salvation. Accordingly, in the Church of Rome to- 
day confession to a priest is compulsory upon all its members, 
from the seven-year-old child to the sovereign pontiff in the 
Vatican. The usual penance is a few short prayers.” 


eighth and ninth centuries it was made compulsory. In the thirteenth cen- 
tury the Fourth Lateran Council confirmed the practice, and ordered that 
private confession be made to a priest at least once a year. In this same 
century the form of absolution was changed from the prayer, “The Lord 
absolve thee,” to the authoritative declaration, “I absolve thee.” (See the 
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Art. Confession of Sins.) 

*“But vicarious penance is also found to exist, and is bought. It is under- 
taken—e. g., by a thrall for his deceased master, after freedom has been 
assured him in reward for it.” (Moeller, “History of the Church, Middle 
Ages,” p. 219.) 

?To do justice to the doctrine of the “sacrament of penance,” it must be 
noted (1) that contrition is required, on the part of the penitent, as well as 
confession and satisfaction; and (2) that while the penitent must offer satis- 
faction for his own sins, in addition to the atonement made for them by the 
Divine Saviour, that satisfaction itself is believed to be made, just as every 
good work is done, through Christ. “But neither is this satisfaction which 
we discharge for our sins so our own as not to be through Jesus Christ. 

. . Thus man has not wherein to glory, but all our glorying is in Christ; 
in whom we live; in whom we merit; in whom we satisfy.” (Council of 
Trent, Sess. xiv., c. 8.) 

On the other hand, the distinction between theory and practice must be 
noted. Practically the stress of attention is laid upon the supposed ex- 
piatory merit of the works of penance, and not upon the contrition of the 


Social Dependence: Discipline 47 


5. INDULGENCES. 


Here arose the idea of “indulgences.” Nor was it the growth 
of a night, to perish beneath the first hot sun of criticism or of 
Christian truth. It grew up little by little through centuries, and 
it has mightily persisted in the Church of Rome through cen- 
turies following. 

At first an indulgence was only a commutation of penance. 
For example, a fast of forty days, inflicted as a penance, might 
be substituted if the penitent’s health seemed to require it—or 
even if it did not—by almsgiving or perhaps by the repetition of 
a number of prayers. Thus the penance could be commuted, and 
the something else accepted in its place might be called an indul- 
gence (indulgentia, a remission of taxes, a remission of punish- 
ment). 

But in the course of time an indulgence came to be regarded 
not as a commutation of penance, which was believed to be a 
satisfaction for sin, taking away guilt and temporal punishment, 
but simply as a remission of the temporal punishmenf due the 
sin even after penance had done its work. From the proposition 
that the Church had power given her of God to assign penance 
for the expiation of sin the logical flight was made, apparently, 
that this same Church had power to remit, for a suitable consid- 
eration, some portion, or even the whole, of the temporal punish- 
ment which God inflicts for sin. 

But this temporal punishment extends, so it was taught, into 
the unseen world—for the doctrine of purgatory, a place of puri- 
fication from sin through suffering after the present life, was 
also coming into acceptance as an article of faith. Therefore the 


heart or the relation of this human merit to the merit and glory of Christ. 
“In the theological treatment of the subject, it is true . . . the penitence 
of the heart and painful regret are theoretically emphasized as the necessary 
presupposition of their saving fruit; but the conception, which descended 
from the ancient Church, of penance as a satisfaction which was to be of- 
fered to the Church, and ultimately to God himself, necessarily exerted an 
externalizing influence. . . . Stress is laid upon the individual trans- 
gression and its expiation, but not upon the inward disposition,” (Moeller, 
“History of the Church, Middle Ages,” p. 218.) 


48 Christianity as Organized 


Church claimed authority to shorten, or even wholly to remit, 
through indulgences, the pains of purgatory itself. 

But how could the claim thus to effect and declare such a de- 
liverance of the soul from the just judgment of God now and 
hereafter be explained and justified? Here the idea of “the 
treasure of the Church” was called for, and began to take form 
and appear. In the thirteenth century it was elaborated by Thom- 
as Aquinas (1227-74), the greatest of medieval doctors of the- 
ology; and without being formulated by any ecclesiastical coun- 
cil, it also became an article of faith. 

What, then, did it mean—this doctrine of the treasure of the 
Church? It meant that there was a fund of merit consisting of 
the merits of saints, both in this world and in heaven, who had 
done more good works than were necessary to procure their own 
salvation, the merits of the Virgin Mary, and, to supply any 
deficiency, the infinite merits of Christ himself. To the store- 
house of this treasure the Church, in the person of her supreme 
pontiff, held the key." The pope could apply to the souls of 
Roman Catholics such a portion of these merits as this or that 
soul might need. An indulgence, then, is “a remission in whole 
or in part, through the superabundant merits of Jesus Christ and 
his saints, of the temporal punishment due to God on account of 
sin, after the guilt and eternal punishment have been remitted.” 
But what were the conditions on which this transfer of merit 
might be made—in other words, on which an indulgence might 
be obtained? They were such, for example, as making a pil- 
grimage to some holy place, enlisting in a crusade, or, very com- 
monly, giving a sum of money to some pious object. 

Nor was this all. The pope claimed the power to release 
through indulgences souls already in purgatory. He could do 


1“The pitiless logic of Aquinas established the papal supremacy. As in- 
dulgences were extra-sacramental and no longer a matter of orders but of 
jurisdiction, and as the treasure required a guardian who would prevent its 
squandering, the pope alone was its keeper; whoever else dispensed it could 
only do so by delegation from him, limited as he might see fit.” (Lea, “Con- 
fession and Indulgences,” Vol. III., p. 37.) 

2Gibbons, “The Faith of Our Fathers,” p. 385. 


Social Dependence: Discipline 49 


it unconditionally, as a free gift to them, or he could do it in the 
customary way, which was on condition of a money payment 
(“alms”) by some one willing thus to buy the indulgence for 
them." For this unseen world, with its awful pains and penalties, 
let it be remembered, was also included in the territory and under 
the dominion of the pope. Who would not pay a sum of money 
to be saved from going there, or, if he had the heart of a human 
being, to save a friend who was already there and pleading for 
deliverance? 

Indulgences were advertised or were hawked about in the 
streets and the country places. So much money for so much 
Divine remission of punishment for sin, either here or hereafter, 
and either for one’s self or for one’s friends. The sale of them 
was acknowledged by the Council of Trent to have been attended 
with grave abuses—as, for example, in the case of the monk 
Tetzel soliciting funds under authority of Leo X. for the com- 
pletion of St. Peter’s Cathedral.” But it was the abuse of an 
abuse, of the fearful fundamental abuse of offering the grace of 
God as an article of merchandise, the barest account of which 
one’s hand hesitates, as if it were quoting blasphemy, to write 
down. 

Here flew the electric spark that kindled into flame the Lu- 
theran Reformation. 


1Lea, “Confession and Indulgences,” Vol. IIL, pp. 351-354. 

®The Council of Trent, in its “Decree Concerning Indulgences,” giving 
no definition of indulgences and deciding none of the vexed questions con- 
cerning them, “condemns with anathema those who either assert that they 
are useless, or who deny that there is in the Church the power of granting 
them,” and desires that in granting them “moderation be observed,” and that 
“the abuses that have crept therein and by occasion of which the honorable 
name of Indulgences is blasphemed by heretics, be amended and corrected.” 


4 


IV. 


SOCIAL DEPENDENCE: DISCIPLINE, ORGANIZED 
FELLOWS HIe. 


THERE was another disciplinary procedure which in certain 
times and places was no less familiar than fearsome. It was a 
procedure in which Church and State were united in inflicting 
punishment for offenses against religion. Such offenses were 
accounted crimes against the State, and dealt with accordingly. 
Condemned by the Church, men were fined or whipped or im- 
prisoned or put to death for them. Especially to be noted is the 
law of those States which made burning alive the punishment of 
heretics. 

This kind of discipline may be traced back to the very begin- 
ning of the alliance between Church and State. Constantine the 
Great announced a decree of banishment against those who re- 
fused to sign the Nicene creed, and of death against readers of 
the works of Arius. His successors on the imperial throne fol- 
lowed a similar rule of action. In our modern age also the in- 
fliction of various corporal pains and penalties for errors in re- 
ligion used to be almost universally accepted as a righteous law 
of the Christian State. It was found in the statute books of even 
Protestant peoples. Nor did it appear there as a mere dead let- 
ter. Both in the New World and in the Old it. was frequently 
and severely executed. The story of our American colonies fur- 
nishes some lamentable examples. 

Not only in statute books of the Christian State, but also in the 
beliefs of the very best Christians, it lingered. In approval of 
this law such men as the saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, the spir- 
itually charming Fénelon, and the mild, scholarly Melancthon, it 
must be admitted, kept company with each other and as well with 
the Council of Constance and the Grand Monarch of France. 
For the idea of religious liberty, now so familiar—and, shall we 
say, so world-wide in its prevalence ?>—had to fight its way slow- 


(50) 


Social Dependence: Discipline 51 


ly, and at much cost of mental anguish and of precious blood, 
to enthronement in men’s minds. So the ecclesiastical court of 
the sixteenth century, for example, not only excommunicated the 
condemned heretic, but also delivered him into the hands of the 
magistrate to be burned at the stake. 

Shall we ask for the idea of so unfitting a form of punish- 
ment—the motives that disposed even good men to approve it? 
One motive, no doubt, was to prevent the destruction of souls by 
the man who with his persistent heresies would destroy them, 
and to terrorize any others who might be disposed to follow in 
his steps. Another motive was to effect and preserve, in both 
Church and State, an unbroken outward unity. 


1. DISCIPLINE EMPHASIZED IN PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 
AND WHy. 


But the Churches of the Reformation recognized the exercise 
of discipline, for the most part, in its true value and significance." 
In some Protestant confessions of faith it is even given, to- 
gether with the administration of sacraments, as one of the three 
marks of the true Church.” Nor is this surprising when it is re- 
membered that the Reformation was, in spirit and aim, a reforma- 
tion of morals no less truly than of religious rites and doctrines. 
It was against the demoralizing influence of indulgences that 
Luther’s first heroic protest was made. And in the Roman Cath- 
olic revival that followed tle reformatory movement it was not 
the rites or the doctrines of the Roman Church, but its disci- 
pline, that was amended. 


*“As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the Church, so does dis- 
cipline form the ligaments which connect the members together to keep each 
in its place. Whoever, therefore, either desires the abolition of all disci- 
pline, or obstructs its restoration, whether they act from design or inadvert- 
ency, they certainly promote the entire dissolution of the Church.” (Calvin, 
“Tnstitutes,” Bk. IV., c. xii, Sec. 1. Cf. “Westminster Confession of Faith.”) 

2“The marks by which the true Church is known are these: If the pure 
doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; if she maintains the pure ad- 
| ministration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline 
| is exercised in the punishing of sin.” (“The Belgic Confession (1561),” Art. 
XXIX. See also the Scotch “Confession of Faith (1560),” Art. XVIII.) 


52 Christianity as Organized 


2. ILLUSTRATION FOUND IN CALVINIAN DISCIPLINE, IN 
INDEPENDENCY, AND IN METHODISM. 


Let us take the disciplinary procedure of John Calvin, set forth 
in the “Institutes” and embodied, though imperfectly, in his own 
ecclesiastic administration, as fairly representing that of Protes- 
tantism in general. Here the course of discipline consists in, first, 
private admonition (unless the sin be public and notorious) by 
any brother Christian, but especially by the pastor and the pres- 
byters; next, if necessary, a second admonition, in the presence 
of witnesses; then, if these prove unavailing, a summons before 
the presbyters, who constitute the tribunal of the Church, for 
more severe admonition; and, finally, if the offender, refusing to 
obey the church, persist in his wrongdoing, exclusion from mem- 
bership." In the case of notorious crimes recourse must be had 
at once to exclusion. In it all the severity of the church should 
be tempered with clemency; and the excommunicated member 
must not be given up as hopelessly lost, but won back, if possible, 
to the communion of Christ and his people.* 

But in the application of these scriptural principles and meth- 
ods in the Genevan Church, Calvin met with serious difficulty. 
On the whole, his undertaking failed; and one explanation, at 
least, of its failure may be found in that cause of demoralization 
which we have just now had occasion to notice—in the alliance 
of Church and State. The same cause has also been operative 
in the same direction in the various national Protestant Churches 
of Europe—Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican—even unto this 
day. Must not such a failure be inevitable, where the Christian 
idea of the Church as the communion of saints is exchanged for 
the political idea of the body politic as a church? 

It was for the purpose of securing a godly discipline, which 
seemed impossible then, as it seems now, in the Anglican Church, 


1Tt will be seen that the course prescribed by our Lord for the individual 
Christian who has been wronged by his brother, is here adopted as the course 
of administration of discipline by the church. Cf. “Discipline of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, South (1906),” p. 130. 

*Tnstitutes,” Bk. IV., c. xii, 8 


Social Dependence: Fellowship 53 


that Separatism, or, as it was afterwards called, Independency, 
arose. Hence Independency would have church members walk 
together for mutual edification, and the church, or congregation, 
as a whole, to call wrongdoers to account under the method pre- 
scribed by Christ for the offended and the offending brother.” 

Methodism, which, like Independency, had its origin in the 
English Establishment, offers a peculiar example of church dis- 
cipline in connection with Christian fellowship. It began as, in 
more than the ordinary sense, a social religious institute. Its 
membership, gathered in large measure from the illiterate and 
neglected classes of the people, and as individuals rather than 
as families, found a congenial church-home in the “societies.” 
Having no regular and complete ministerial service, they were 
largely dependent on one another for spiritual upbuilding. In 
these circumstances the class meeting arose, not through design 
or foresight, but incidentally, as the providential supply for a 
manifest need. All members of a society must be enrolled as 
members of some class, which held weekly meetings for the in- 
terchange of religious experiences and to receive the counsels of 
the leader. Fellowship was organized.” 


1“The censures so appointed by Christ are admonition and excommunica- 
tion; and whereas some offenses are or may be known only to some, it is ap- 
pointed by Christ that those to whom they are so known do first admonish 
the offender in private (in public offenses where they sin, before all), and 
in case of non-amendment upon private admonition, the offense being related 
to the church, and the offender not manifesting his repentance, he is to be 
duly admonished in the name of Christ by the whole Church; and if this 
censure avail not for his repentance, then he is to be cast out by excom- 
munication, with the consent of the Church.” (“The Savoy Declaration 
(1658) of Church Order,’ Art. XIX.) 

?Wesley wrote concerning the class meeting, soon after its origination in 
his societies: “It can scarcely be conceived what advantages have been reaped 
by this little prudential regulation. Many now experienced that Christian 
fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They began 
to bear one another’s burdens, and naturally to care for each other’s welfare. 
And as they had daily a more intimate acquaintance, so they had a more 
endeared affection for each other. Upon reflection, I could not but observe, 
this is the very thing which was from the beginning of Christianity.” (Tyer- 
man, “Life of Wesley,’ Vol. I., p. 379.) 


54 Christianity as Organized 


These societies, moreover, were not a church but societies only, 
supplementing the ministrations of the Church of England. To 
join such a communion or to be expelled from it did not affect 
one’s church relations. Hence special rules of conduct might be 
required of its members, such as could not properly be enforced 
as conditions of membership in a Christian church. 

Regular attendance upon class meeting was a rule which thus 
became a condition of membership in the societies. It was felt 
that only thus could that holy and happy type of piety for which 
they had been instituted be realized. And one can hardly imagine 
how greater emphasis could have been laid upon the value of 
social dependence in religion. 

But when, about half a century afterwards, first in America 
and then in Great Britain, the societies were organized into 
churches, with an ordained ministry and the regular administra- 
tion of sacraments, the former conditions of membership, and 
along with the rest the attendance upon class-meeting, were re- 
tained.” Here, however, a distinctly different principle was in- 
volved, and apparently overlooked: Shall a Church of Christ cast 


*The rule as formerly laid down in the Book of Discipline of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church is as follows: “What shall be done with those mem- 
bers of our Church who willfully and repeatedly neglect to meet their class? 
Let the elder, deacon, or one of the preachers visit them whenever: it is 
practicable, and explain to them the consequences if they continue to neg- 
lect—namely, exclusion. If they do not amend, let him who has charge of 
the circuit or station bring their case before the society or a select number, 
before whom they shall have been cited to appear; and if they be found 
guilty of willful neglect by a majority of the members before whom the case 
is brought, let them be laid aside, and let the preacher show that they are 
excluded for a breach of our rules, and not for immoral conduct.” 

The present rule simply includes the class meeting with public worship, 
the prayer meeting, and other means of grace, the penalty for the willful 
neglect of any of which is expulsion. 

In the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the General Conference of 
1866 did away with attendance upon class meeting as a condition of mem- 
bership in the church. 

In the British Wesleyan Church members are still required to attend class 
meeting as a condition of remaining in the Church. The requirement, how- 
ever, is not strictly enforced; and of late years there has been a strong in- 
fluence toward making attendance voluntary. 


Social Dependence: Fellowship 55 


out one of her members for the neglect of any other than a 
Divinely instituted ordinance? shall the neglect of what has been 
described by its organizer himself as simply a most valuable 
“little prudential regulation” be taken as a sufficient cause for 
expulsion ?* 

Nevertheless this simple “prudential regulation” proved to be 
singularly effective for “that which is good, unto edifying.” The 
Christian watch-care and fellowship which it secured were of 
inestimable value; and where, as in the great majority of in- 
stances, it has been discontinued, no adequate substitute has yet 
been found.” 


3. PRESENT-Day Laxity oF DISCIPLINE. 


The well-nigh universal disciplinary tendency in the churches 
at the present time is toward the extreme of undue laxity. 
Doubtless there have been Donatists, Independents, Puritans, 
Methodists, and others that have held overstrict views of eccle- 


Gregory, in his Fernley Lectures (“The Holy Catholic Church, the 
Communion of Saints”), argues strongly but not conclusively, I think, for 
the retention of the class-meeting test of membership in the Church. His 
position is shown in the following passage (p. 235): “It is objected that the 
Methodists have no right to insist upon meeting in class as a sine qua non 
of membership; Christ and his apostles did not demand meeting in class; 
therefore Methodism has no right to require it. With all due deference we 
must submit that this objection arises from a superficial view of the case. 
What Methodism insists on is veritable fellowship and effective oversight— 
bona fide fellowship as an institution, the fulfillment of the repeated apos- 
tolic injunctions to that effect and the imitation of the primitive Church in 
this practice—effective oversight, the watching for souls ‘as they that must 
give account.’ Now this, if done effectively and systematically at all, must 
be done by some definite arrangement or other; and the class meeting is 
admittedly the best way that has yet been devised.” 

2“Ts it not clear that we profoundly need something approaching the over- 
sight and the personal dealing of the old-time class leader? . . . We can- 
not go back to the class-meeting test. But we do need some substitute for 
it, some definition of the duties of Church membership that will make the 
careless, selfish, stingy man feel himself out of place in the Church, and some 
provision for so enforcing upon every member these conditions of his mem- 
bership as shall give back to the Church once more the semblance at least 
of a self-respecting discipline.” (Christian Advocate (Nashville), 1907.) 


56 Christianity as Organized 


siastic discipline. But where shall we look for overstrictness 
now? And to assert of any church that it exercises practically 
no discipline upon its members, is to place it under a grievous 
condemnation. Because the need is unquestionable. It is not 
only shown in the New Testament and exemplified in the whole 
course of organized Christianity, but is apparent from the very 
idea of a social organization. For no society can be perpetuated, 
or even formed, without laws, which are simply uniform modes 
of action; and the violation of law must needs involve penalty.” 

Moreover, as in the physical realm law and penalty are of 
necessity physical, and in the moral world moral, so in the social 
world they are social. Here the transgressor breaks the ties that 
bind him to the society; in spirit he puts himself out, for “what- 
ever a man does he does to himself.’”” And so the outward cen- 
sures which the society may visit upon him, from the slightest 
reproof to the extreme penalty of excision, are but the formally 
expressed social consequences of his personal conduct. 

The need of administrative wisdom, also, is imperative. Al- 
ways must it be borne in mind that a church exists for its mem- 
bers, and not the members for the church. Also that “in many 
things we all stumble.” The parable of the Wheat and the Tares 
is our Lord’s perpetual warning against such a treatment of the 
unworthy as shall seriously injure the faithful. 

Besides, ecclesiastical censures are subject to the embarrassing 
limitation that it is only the open sins, which are not necessarily 
the worst, for which they can be inflicted. The case of the profli- 
gate is plain; the case of the often more culpable hypocrite is diffi- 


“That the maintenance of discipline may be regarded as a thing abso- 
lutely necessary, not only for the good order of the congregation but also 
for its well-being and prosperity, will certainly, as a matter of principle, be 
contradicted by no one. Though this maintenance may be temporarily im- 
peded, whether by or apart from the Church’s own fault [through the union 
of Church and State, for example], its continued neglect is tantamount to 
a sentence of death pronounced by the congregation on itself. It cannot 
and must not have peace with that which is to the Church a dishonor, to 
the world a scandal, to the Lord a grief.” (Van Oosterzee, “Pastoral The- 
ology,” English translation, p. 538.) 


Social Dependence: Fellowship 57 


cult. The worldliness that takes the form of corrupting amuse- 
ments is manifest; the worldliness that consists in the idolatry 
of money hides itself under more subtle forms. The neglect of 
church ordinances will not be denied; the neglect of the duties 
of home life will less readily be acknowledged, and less easily 
proved by witnesses. “Man looketh upon the outward appear- 
ance, but Jehovah looketh upon the heart.’ “One only is the 
lawgiver and judge, even He who is able to save and to destroy.” 

Whatever is done needs to be done in love, as a father or a 
mother with bleeding heart punishes the disobedient child. Very 
tenderly—with a true “motherly tenderness and a hatred of put- 
ting away’”—is any censure to be inflicted, lest the unhappy of- 
fender ‘should be swallowed up with his overmuch sorrow,” and in 
order that love may be his salvation. Let the law bea schoolmaster, 
and one with a heart in him, to lead the transgressor to Christ. 

But neither wisdom nor gentleness can substitute fidelity. 

And all this will the more clearly appear when it is remem- 
bered that, in the administration of discipline, which, as-we have 
seen, is first personal and then official, the personal is the norm 
of the official When the private Christian would “gain his 
brother” with the word of encouragement or of admonition, 
does it not make the impression on one’s mind of reality, sin- 
cerity, strength, simple and genuine goodness? No less real, sin- 
cere, strong, and good should be the official exercise of disci- 
pline. That would be a poor ecclesiastical corporation which 
“had no soul.”” A church officer or committeeman, in whatever 
position, is to be a mam officiating. Official action is personal 
action under supposedly needful reénforcement and limitation. 


4. POSITIVE PROVISION FOR FELLOWSHIP IN THE CHURCH. 


Conditions of membership and administration of discipline, 
then, are necessary regulations of the Church as a social and 
interdependent body. Nor must these be regarded as merely 
protective regulations. Their true intent is more positive than 
negative, more formative than protective. All discipline implies 
energy, movement, activity in its administrator. And it is never 


58 Christianity as Organized 


applied to a dead thing, but to the living only, in the interest 
also not of destruction but of truer and more abundant life. Its 
object is not to repress or diminish energy, but to sanctify and 
direct it. So the order of the house of God, like the order of a 
schoolroom, is maintained not to make infants of youths or youths 
of young men, nor simply to punish and restrain the wrongdoer. 
Quite the opposite. It is for edification, character-building. In- 
deed, what is Jaz itself? Edmund Burke has described it as “be- 
neficence working by rule.” Though authority be given of the 
Loid to “deal sharply,” it is given “for building up, and not for 
casting down.”* Even the Apostle’s judgment, “with the power 
of the Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the de- 
struction of the flesh,” whatever it may have meant for the pro- 
tection of the Church, and whatever else it may or may not have 
meant, was intended for the offender’s highest and ultimate good 
—“that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.’”* 

This intention is manifestly true of all that discipline which we 
have already noticed as distinctly formative—of teaching, preach- 
ing, spiritual nurture, congregational worship, sacraments, pas- 
toral care, and leadership. But there is a certain means of forma- 
tive discipline to which, before quitting the general subject, I 
must also ask a moment’s special attention. I mean what might 
be called the special organization of fellowship. 

Will not a wise and brotherly church set a high estimate upon 
this type of organization? Will it not be inclined to institute 
meetings and services designed, more or less largely, for the pro- 
motion of the Christian social life? “Let us consider one another 
to provoke unto love and good works: not forsaking the assem- 
bling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but ex- 
horting one another.”* Were not all the meetings of the apostolic 
and the primitive churches of this character ?* 


12 Cor. xiii. 10. *t Cor. v. 5. SHeb. x. 24, 25. 

““Where the members of the fellowship are all merely passive, where no 
one teaches or speaks or offers vocal prayer but the priest, pastor, or minister, 
there is no trace left of the original fellowship of Christian believers as it 
existed in the apostolic age.” (Riggs, “Church Organization,” p. 14.) 


. 


: 


Social Dependence: Fellowship 59 


There is one perpetual and authoritative example. The Hebrew 
Passover was not only a memorial observance, but also an or- 
ganization of religious fellowship. The gathering of families or 
other little groups about the table, with the various prescribed 
ceremonies of the feast, was both commemorative of Israel’s great 
deliverance and immediately promotive of a sacred social com- 
munion. But “our Passover also hath been sacrificed, even 
Christ.” And when, the evening before his sacrificial death, the 
Master led his little brotherhood of disciples to the upper room, 
and bade them eat the bread and drink the cup together, as often 
as they did it, in remembrance of him, it was the Lord’s institu- 
tion of his own memorial Supper, and it was at the same time 
an organization of fellowship in his Church. Indeed, how could 
this truth of church fellowship be more simply and significantly 
enshrined than in the ever-recurring rite which we have instinct- 
ively come to call “the communion of the Lord’s Supper?” 

In fact, any gathering of Christian people, even though it be 
merely to transact the financial business of a church, is in a very 
appreciable sense contributive to fellowship. It must be so, if 
conducted in the spirit of the Master. But the social feature may 
be more or less, even much more or much less, prominent; and 
from this point of view Christian congregational meetings may 
be divided into (1) the meeting for worship and preaching, (2) 
the meeting for instruction, such as the Sunday school, (3) the 
meeting for fellowship, such as the prayer meeting and the Sup- 
per of the Lord. 

So, then, it may be gladly recognized that the modern assem- 
bling of the congregation on Sunday morning for worship and 
the inspiration of a living message from the pulpit, or for the 
study of the Scriptures in the Sunday school (the Church’s school 
of the Bible), is conducive to mutual friendship and service; that 
closer is fellowship in the prayer meeting, and especially in the 
meeting not only for prayer but also for conference, conversa- 
tion, interchange of sympathy, experiences, and ideas—Christian 
people “exhorting one another ;” that deepest and tenderest of all, 


60 Christianity as Organized 


when observed according to the mind of the Master, is the com- 
munion with one another at his own table. 

But the idea of positive provision for fellowship was more ex- 
clusively embodied in a certain religious feast, of both apostolic 
and post-apostolic times. Organizing themselves about the fami- 
ly idea, the churches of the New Testament held regular congre- 
gational meetings (described, at least in their abuses, in the elev- 
enth chapter of 1 Corinthians) for partaking of a meal together, 
in connection with which they broke the bread and drank the cup 
of the Lord’s Supper." In like manner, in the post-apostolic 
Church the people met together every Sunday for a meal which 
they called Jove (4yéry), whence the later term Jove feast. 
Each, according to his ability, brought his contribution of food; 
each his contribution of sympathy, truth, edification. Men and 
women, the cultured and the rude, even master and slave, asso- 
ciated here as united in Christ. One and another would sing a 
hymn, offer a prayer, deliver a word of exhortation, expound a 
Scripture passage, not according to any fixed rule, but under the 
promptings of the heart.” 

That there could be a Christian church, real and living, without 
some such meeting for fellowship, would probably have been an 
unfamiliar idea to those early centuries. On the other hand, that 
this fellowship should sometimes be abused only proves that Christ’s 
people, then as now, were beset with infirmities and liable to sin.” 


1t Pet. v. 14; 2 Pet. ii. 13; Jude 12, 

“Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it ayat7—i. e., 
affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since 
with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy. . . . The partici- 
pants before reclining taste first of prayer to God. . . . They talk as those 
who know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution and 
the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, 
a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scripture or one of his own com- 
posing. . . . As the feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is 
closed.” (Tertullian, “Apology,” c. 39.) 

8Smith and Cheatham’s “Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,’ Art. Agape. 

It was the abuses of the love feast that occasioned its discontinuance. 
Some time in the fourth century it was prohibited by the Council of Laod- 
icea: “That it is not lawful to hold Agape in the Lord’s houses or the 
churches, or tc eat in the houses of God or lay couches.” (Canon XXVIII.) 


Social Dependence: Fellowship 61 


Why a practice so apparently nonreligious as the eating of a 
meal on these occasions? Because, for one thing, it was a min- 
istration to the poor. They contributed, it is true, of their pov- 
erty, but the rich of their abundance, and it was a common table 
about which rich and poor assembled. “With the good things of 
the feast,’”’ said Tertullian, “we benefit the needy.” The feast of 
food was a feast of beneficent and grateful love. 

But also and chiefly, to break bread with another is to ap- 
proach him in a distinct outward act as a friend. In the home 
the family meal is the regularly recurring occasion for kindly 
and confidential talk, the play of affection, genial courtesies, the 
free sharing of whatever is best in sentiment and thought. It 
means this no less truly than it means the supply of bodily needs. 
Unhuman is the solitary meal. In the West, as well as in the 
ancient and hospitable East, food is symbolic of friendship. 
Then, too, in illustration of this use of food as a sacrament of 
friendship was the incomparable example of Jesus. Sitting as a 
guest at the tables of the people, even in the home of a Pharisee’ 
or a publican,” to both household and guests he broke the bread of 
truth and love. He ate and drank with his disciples day by day, 
and at the Last Supper and after the Resurrection.* Nor shall 
we find any more winsome and searching communication of truth 
than his words at meal with his friends—the table talk of Jesus." 
To partake of a meal with Jesus, as so many did, and as the 
Twelve did so many times, was it a nonreligious experience? It 
was the transfiguration of bodily hunger into a means of the com- 
munion of souls. We can understand, therefore, how those who 
had learned of Jesus “did take their food,” breaking bread in the 
home—probably the evening meal, and partaken of “from house 
to house”’—‘“with gladness and singleness of heart, praising 
God;’ how it seemed good to the New Testament historian 
Luke to record, “Upon the first day of the week, when we were 


*Luke xi. 37; vii. 36. "Luke v. 20; xix. 5-7. 

‘Luke xxiv. 42; John xxi. 12, 15; Acts x. 4. 

“Mark xiv. 3-9; Luke vii. 40-50; x. 38-42; John iv. 31-34; xiii, 6-17; xxi, 
15-22, Pacts) ta: 140; 47, 


62 Christianity as Organized 


gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them,’” 
and to tell that when Paul had “broken the bread and eaten, and 
had talked with them a long while, even till break of day, so he 
departed ;’’”* and how an evening meal together might be chosen 
as a means of spiritual fellowship by the early Christians. 

It is so now. Hence when a few Christian men and women— 
say, the officers and teachers of a Sunday school at a teachers’ 
meeting—make the breaking of bread together a part of the ex- 
ercises, it is both an expedient and a scriptural practice. 

It is the same endeavor to direct and perpetuate the spirit of 
brotherhood that, in modern Christianity, has taken form in the 
love feast of the Moravians, and has found its most extensive 
distinct embodiment in the class meeting of Methodism.° 

Now it is true that brotherly love cannot be mechanically reg- 
ulated. A thing of the heart, it insists on finding its own means 
of expression. Nevertheless it may be effectively served by fa- 
voring methods and opportunities; and one of these is the or- 
ganization of fellowship. If the fountain, breaking through the 
crust of the earth, would do its best for the world, it must create 
and keep a channel, and not diffuse itself aimlessly here and 
there. Organization provides channels for the living waters of 
Christian love, “where they may broadly run.” Nor need any 
one forget that the channel is not the stream. 


Prominent even in the organization of fellowship will be the 
idea of service; not simply of mutual helpfulness, but also of 
united service to others. What can be done for our homes, our 
church, our community, and not merely what is the Christian life 
to us and what are we to one another, will be chief subjects of 
conversation. Otherwise the spirit of love itself may weaken 


NGS) Box, 74 GAGES) Soul. 

®“After men became Christians much of their time was spent in prayer 
and devotion, in religious meetings, in celebrating the eucharist, in confer- 
ences, in exhortations, in preaching, in an affectionate intercourse with one 
amother, and correspondence with other societies. Perhaps their mode of 
life, in its form and habit, was not very unlike the Unitas Fratrum or the 
modern Methodists.” (Paley, “Evidences of Christianity,” Part IL, ¢. 1.) 


Social Dependence: Fellowship 63 


and degenerate into exclusivism. In the home life there may be 
a family as well as an individual selfishness. There are women 
who, with admirable devotion to their own households, have no 
heart nor hand for any larger sphere. There are men who are 
kind to their own kith and kin, yet not philanthropic. Similarly 
there is such a thing as congregational selfishness. “Our church” 
may shut out the rest of the churches and of the world. 

But such is not the Christianity of Christ. The meeting for 
fellowship in his name will find its most healthful outcome in the 
fellowship of work. Suppose, for example, that the business 
methods of the outside community are saturated with falsehood 
and selfishness, and the church makes no effort to Christianize 
them, or that even its own members habitually practice these 
methods. Suppose that the prevailing conditions of community 
life have hardly begun to be brought under the law of Christ. 
Shall a church as such care for none of these things? She must 
care for them all. A smug little ecclesiasticism cultivating within 
itself the Christian social life, with no recognized mission of 
Christianization to the social, political, commercial, educational, 
and industrial relations of men—that surely does not fulfill the 
idea of the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the goodly 
fellowship of “fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God.” 


V. 
INDIVIDUALISM: PARISH, MONASTERY. 


SOcIAL dependence is not to be interpreted as the destruction, 
or even repression, of the individual. It is not each separate soul 
sinking down into the social order so as to lose its personal sig- 
nificance or reason for existence. Only through an abuse of the 
principle of sociality can this occur. The right use of it will be 
followed by exactly the opposite effect. As in the very dawn of 
consciousness the child’s association with other minds does not 
hinder, but on the contrary awakens and sustains, his sense of 
selfhood, so is it in youth, in the years of maturity, in old age, 
throughout life. To grow up into a clear and commanding con- 
sciousness of oneself as a person, one must come into acquaint- 
anceship with other persons. 

No doubt it is true, what the philosophers say, that by con- 
tact with an external world we become aware of ourselves. But 
it is equally true that by association with fellow-beings this aware- 
ness of ourselves is still more distinctly realized. The silent daily 
assertion, “I am not you,” clears and strengthens, through con- 
trast, the self-assertion, “I am myself.” The individual is not 
meant to be overcome, but on the contrary to be stimulated, by 
social contact— 


And grow a larger self by other selves. 


In politics, therefore, when the citizen yields passively to the 
governing power, whatever kind of governing it does, or goes 
blindly with his party, whatever its policy, offering thus a belated 
example of the ancient political theory that the state is every- 
thing and the individual nothing, he is abusing, not properly 
using, his social instincts. He has his reward—the smiles of 
the demagogue whose purpose he serves. He must also endure 
his punishment—the enfeeblement of himself. In religion, like- 
wise, when the Christian passively receives whatever is given by 


(64) 


Indwidualism: Monastery 65 


his church, accepting its polity, its rites, its brotherhood, its 
teachings, with no reason save that of a drowsy, unreflecting 
submission, he also is chargeable with an abuse of the principle 
of sociality. He must react upon what he sees and hears before 
it becomes really his own. Association with Christian brethren 
is intended thus to guide him not away from but into the com- 
pletest possible personal life. 


I. INDIVIDUALIZING EFFECTS OF THE TEACHING AND THE 
PERSONALITY OF JESUS. 


This undoubtedly is the testimony of the Gospels. For in them 
not only the social but also the personal element of religion is 
set forth in the very lime light of truth. 

The transcendent personality of Jesus would quicken the per- 
sonal powers of any open-hearted disciple. So with his teaching, 
both in spirit and form. He came to men, as a teacher, with 
truth and inspiration, not with intellectual fetters. He taught 
in parables, which had to be thought out by the learner. He 
gave life-breathing words, not groovelike formulas of outward 
conduct. He appealed to men’s reason and conscience: “Why 
even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ?’””* 

And were no eye in us to tell, 
Instructed by no inner sense, 


The light of heaven from the dark of hell, 
That light would want its evidence. 


The dominant Greek and Roman thought subordinated the in- 
dividual to the institution. Jesus declared: “The Sabbath was 
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” Broadly speaking, 
Judaism was for the religious training of a people; Christianity 
for the quickening of persons into conscious sonship to God. 
The message of the prophets of Israel was predominantly to the 
nation: “O Israel, return unto Jehovah thy God, for thou hast 
fallen by thine iniquity.” The ministry of Jesus was to the in- 
dividual: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” 


Luke xii. 57. 


66 Christiamty as Organized 


He showed the priceless worth of the single soul. Wakening 
that consciousness of worth, and putting each man for an awful 
moment apart from his fellows, he bade him look up and realize 
that his first and deepest relationship is with the Father-God. 
The good Shepherd goes forth to seek any one sheep that is lost. 
Not even the lowliest child is despised: he is an object of Divine 
and angelic regard. As to his disciples, Jesus would not have 
them follow him with a blind, mechanical subservience, as bond 
servants, not knowing what their Master did. He would relate 
them to himself, and make them sharers of his life in the far 
more enlightened and personal relation of friendship. “I have 
called you friends; for all things that I heard from my Father I 
have made known unto you.” 

And the Christian consciousness—is it not, whatever else it 
may be, the sense of personality raised to its highest power? 
The Christian—by what name shall he be called? In his imme- 
diate access to God, a priest; in the royalty of his will power and 
character, a king; in his inmost spiritual life, a son of God. Be- 
hold the egoism of the gospel! 

Inasmuch, then, as Jesus emphasizes both the social and the 
personal element of religion, we may infer that there is no con- 
flict between the two. And we are prepared to learn what ex- 
perience teaches—that, on the contrary, they are mutually sery- 
iceful. It is an economic writer of the present day who holds 
that “the more the liberty of each individual grows, the more the 
social activity may, and ought, to grow in its turn.” Similarly 
the stronger the personality of the individual disciples who, gath- 
ering about the Master, compose a church, the stronger the church 
thus constituted. And their fraternal association, in its turn, 
tends not to restrain but to develop in each of them this same per- 
sonality. Each for himself has to choose to do the Heavenly 
Father’s will, and in relation to his brethren to minister rather 
than be ministered unto. Each for himself is to become no less 
aggressive than compliant. Each for himself bearing another’s 
burden will be better prepared to bear his own. Associate life 
will both define and enrich individual life. 


; 
. 
} 


Individualism: Monastery 67 


This will appear more clearly if we consider for a little while 
what personality is. Not that I propose to attempt a definition 
of it. No one has a moment’s time to spend in the attempt to 
define an ultimate fact; and personality is an ultimate fact—in- 
comparably the greatest that we know anything about. The 
“solid” earth is a trifle beside it. But perhaps we can make up 
something like a description of it by taking note of its most con- 
spicuous qualities; and these are such as freedom, self-conscious- 
ness, the sense of identity, reason, will, self-possession, moral 
love. 

It is this last quality with which we are here concerned. Per- 
sonality involves the power not only of self-disposal in general, 
but of self-devotion in particular. Poor and meager must be its 
development under the régime of either the ancient or the mod- 
ern Ishmael—his hand against every man and every man’s hand 
against him. It is capable of acknowledging the law of love; 
and only under this law can it reach its highest development. 
Its very nature, therefore, calls for a social and not a selfish or 
merely individualistic life. The true life is lived, the true self 
found, the true personality perfected in a Christian response to 
the presence of fellow-beings. 

It is not in the prison of selfishness—“himself,’ as Milton 
said of the voluptuary, “his own dungeon’’—but out beneath the 
heavens of truth, in free and whole-hearted obedience to Christ- 
like love, the law of his nature, that a man may hope to realize 
in its finest expression the great master-fact of selfhood. 


2. REPRESSION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 


Now in the human world, as contradistinguished from all low- 
er spheres, interest culminates in the individual; and for the rea- 
son that here the individual is not merely a creature but a person. 
As such he is not to be used, like a plow or even like the faithful 
horse that draws it, in gaining some end, but is himself a true 
end in which other persons may rest and be satisfied. So it is 
not people but persons, not societies but souls, not types or classes 
but personal characters and careers for which we—who our- 


68 Christianity as Orgamzed 


selves are each a person, a soul, a character—chiefly care. It is 
not humanity but this or that man about whom we wish to hear. 
It is not personality, but personalities that have power over us. 

The case is supposable, however, that the Church of God should 
so pervert its Divine idea as to become repressive of the per- 
sonal quality in religion. It might come to stand for solidarity 
and to gain its end at the expense of individuality, which con- 
sists of one’s peculiarities of intellect, temperament, or speech; 
or even at the expense of personality, which, according to the 
description of it just given, consists of the essential capacities and 
powers of one’s being. In a word, it might create such an eccle- 
siastic oneness as to dishonor individualism, which may be taken 
as including both individuality and personality. 

Not only might this be so, but it has been so. For, as a matter 
of fact, the Church did thus overdo the idea of solidarity in the 
fourth and a number of succeeding centuries. Its policy was so 
to impose its rites and so to exercise its authority as to bring the 
whole community, through external pressure rather than free, 
personal choice, into its membership. It laid its hand by means 
of baptism, which was identified with the new birth, upon every 
child that was born. Its public ministrations were, to a large 
extent, such as the unspiritual mind could receive without dis- 
turbance or offense—spectacular and priestly, not vitally moral 
and evangelic. Its government became autocratic and hierarchic. 
Through the Church’s loss of spirituality, rather than through the 
world’s regeneration, the Church and the nation, as in pagan or 
Mohammedan countries, became practically one. All too much 
were men treated as a mass of homogeneous material to be mold- 
ed, through the action of ecclesiastic machinery, into a uniform 
religious product. They were clay for the brickmaker’s hand. 

But here we shall do well to pause a moment and dwell some- 
what more particularly upon the causes in operation to make the 
Church an invader rather than a promoter of personality. In 
no small measure the effect was due to environment. We of the 
present generation are living in an age of a growing social con- 
science, it may be hoped, and very certainly in an age of a well- 


Individualism: Monastery 69 


grown individualism. We are indebted for it largely to the 
New Testament. The influence of Jesus, wherever it is wel- 
comed, must produce such an effect. It has been said that the 
Free Churches of England are “nurseries of individualism.” 
Whatever dangers it might involve, such likewise were the apos- 
tolic churches and their immediate successors. They took even 
the abject slave by the hand and lifted him up into a sense of his 
immortal manhood. But autocracy, imperialism, militarism, was 
the dominant note of the all-conquering Roman Empire, under 
whose sway these little Christian communities had to gain and 
maintain a standing ground. The common man was to be used 
rather than respected. The slavery of captives or men of in- 
ferior races or other useful unfortunates was to be accepted as a 
part of the constitution of the world. “The slave,” says the most 
influential philosophic mind of antiquity, “is, as it were, a part of 
the master, as if he were an animated part of his body, though 
separate.” They are “destined by nature to slavery”—so he 
taught—and “there is nothing better for them to do than to 
obey.” Modern and Western ideas of the rights of the indi- 
vidual human being had not yet risen above the threshold of the 
national consciousness. In these circumstances was it any won- 
der that the imperialism of the State should invade the Gentile 
churches? 

But there was also a more powerful force in the Church’s en- 
vironment that wrought for the same effect. The imperial gov- 
ernment was a pagan and sacerdotal government. Its religion 
was a religion of priests and sacrifices and auguries. In this re- 
ligion the Gentile Christians had been born and brought up. It 


Aristotle, “Politics,” Bk. I, c. 6. 

Compare this teaching about slaves with the teaching of the Apostle of 
the Gentiles to them (Aristotle taught nothing to them): ‘“Wast thou called 
being a bondservant? care not for it; but if thou canst become free, use it 
rather. For he that was called in the Lord, being a bondservant, is the 
Lord’s freedman;” and again: “Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto 
the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive 
the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ.” (1 Cor. vii 
21, 22; Col. iii. 23, 24.) 


70 Christianity as Organized 


was intertwined with many of the dearest associations of their 
life. It was their inheritance through the course of generations 
—in the blood, in the habit of mind. No wonder, then, if they 
should be inclined to carry with them the idea of it and the in- 
clination toward it, in some form or other, into the Church? 
At any rate, it gave signs ere long of its presence in the Church. 
The so-called Christian priest made his appearance. The hier- 
arch began to put forth his claims in the household of Jesus. 

And the point of significance here is that the sacerdotal idea 
of Christianity, whether embodied in the culmination of its power 
in the Church of Rome or in the somewhat milder forms of the 
earlier churches and of modern ritualistic communities, is no 
friend of individualism. Let it be successfully taught that the 
ministry antedates and makes the Church; that this ministry is 
a priesthood; that the regenerate life begins in baptism, received 
either in infancy or on profession of faith, and that it is nourished 
by bread and wine, which, through the priest’s consecrating 
words, is changed into spiritual food; that forgiveness of sins 
is from the priest; that the Church, supposed to be coordinate 
with the Scriptures and an infallible teacher, is to take men into 
its membership that it may both make and keep them Christians 
through the administration of ordinances; let this be done, and 
the result will not be doubtful. A manifestly different type of 
Christian character will appear from that which properly results 
from the teaching of the New Testament. It will lack dis- 
tinctness, depth, freedom, individuality, strength of personality. 
It will bear the watermarks of a system of spiritual oppression 
heavier than that from which the Jewish Christians had been 
rescued whom the great world-Apostle teaches and exhorts: 
“With freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and 
be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.” 

Thus the rising sacerdotalism of the earlier Christian centuries, 
so far as it had sway, added the weight of its influence to that 
of imperialism; and the operation of the united forces was to dis- 
pose the individual side by side with his fellows upon a certain 
dead level of authoritative ceremonial religion. Verily the new- 


Individualism: Monastery 71 


born sense of selfhood “was here, but as a child in the midst of 
grown-up foes.” 

What now shall the earnest souls do, intent upon the satisfac- 
tion of their own conscious and particular spiritual needs? Many 
of them, let us hope, persisted, despite unfavorable surroundings, 
in seeking the true knowledge of God. Many doubtless gave up 
the attempt and drifted with the popular tide. Some stood forth 
in protest as heretics or schismatics. But there was also a great 
multitude who, without antagonizing the Church, neither dis- 
believing its dogmas nor refusing its rites, simply turned away 
into seclusion, and formed religious communities of their own. 
The monastery was instituted. Montanism has been described 
as “a beating of the wings of pietism against the iron bars of 
organization.” Monasticism was not a beating against the bars, 
but an escape on the unfolded wings of pietism to a chosen re- 
treat. 

It is with this movement that we are now chiefly to be occu- 
pied. 


3. FORMATION OF THE PARISH. 


It may be well, then, to take a glance at the parish church and 
the monastery, as they stood side by side, embodying contrasted 
conceptions of Christianity, through the early and the medieval 
centuries. 

The word parish (in its Greek form, zaporxéa, a “sojourning,” 
which afterwards came to mean the “sojourners” themselves) 
is the name which seems to have been given two thousand years 
ago to a community of Jews in a Gentile city. For the Jews 
were then, as now, a scattered nation. They were found, for ex- 
ample, in Ephesus or Corinth or Rome, far from the father- 
land, a comparatively small community dwelling alongside the 
great Gentile community. Yet with these dominant Gentiles— 
being separated from them by religious faith and observances— 
they were in no close affinity. So they were called strangers, for- 
eigners, sojourners (7apocxéa). 

Now when the gospel was preached in such cities and the 


92 Christianity as Organized 


first little Christian congregations gathered, they too were called 
parokiai (or, as we have it, parishes). Why so? Perhaps be- 
cause, for one thing, these congregations were formed in part 
out of members of the Jewish population, and in some instances, 
as may be supposed, the synagogue itself became a Christian 
church. Also, we may believe, because of the nearness of these 
little Christian communities to, and at the same time their sep- 
arateness from (zapa-oixéw), the generality of the people. It 
would seem still again that the idea of their being but sojourners 
on earth, having their real citizenship in heaven, favored this 
application of the term to the early Christian communities.” 
Christianity went on to overspread province after province of 
the Empire; and as churches were multiplied, especially in the 
city and its suburbs, the whole group of churches under the rule 
of a bishop was called a parish.” But after a time—say, by the 
beginning of the fourth century—this group of churches, no 
longer circumscribed by the city and its environs, but, extending 
into the country, began to be called a diocese, and the name parish 
to be restricted to the single congregation.” 
At first parishes had no strict territorial limits, either in city 
or country; nor did they necessarily adjoin one another. But 
when whole peoples became (nominally) Christianized, and the 
organization of the Church was perfected, their entire territory 
(as, for instance, in England at the present day) would in the 


al iBetene) 17: 

Clement of Rome begins his Epistle to the Corinthians with the words: 
“The Church of God which sojourns (7% tapotxotoa ) at Rome to the Church 
of God sojourning (79 Tapockovo7) at Corinth.” (See also Polycarp, To the 
Philippians. 

?Eusebius, for example, speaks of Cyprian as “pastor of the parish of 
Carthage.” (Ecc. Hist., Bk. VIL, c. 3.) 

8“Tt [diocese] . . . signified an aggregate not merely of several dis- 
tricts, governed each by its own bishop, but of several provinces, each pre- 
sided over by a metropolitan. The diocese itself was under an Exarch or 
Metropolitan. . . . About the same period the word diocese began also 
to assume the sense which has finally prevailed to the exclusion of that 
just mentioned, and to be used to signify a district governed by a single 
bishop.” (Smith and Cheatham’s Dictionary, Art. “Diocese.”) 


Individualism: Monastery 7 


course of time be divided into parishes. Each of these parishes, 
moreover, would have its pastor or ruler (“‘rector’’), whose ad- 
ministration was that of a priest—the people, on their part, be- 
ing free to choose neither pastor nor place of worship.” 

Meanwhile, through all the changes of the decades and cen- 
turies, the rule of the bishops was steadily maintained. 

Thus the Church was completing its organization and subject- 
ing all classes and conditions of men to its authority. More and 
more it came to stand for the principle of solidarity. More and 
more it tended to fuse its membership into a mass, to take charge 
of their consciences, to offer them a uniform measure and me- 
chanical method of religion. 

We have already glanced at the effect of this procedure. About 
the best that can be said of it is, that the Christian people were 
regularly brought into contact with sacred things, their religious 
instincts were honored, and more or less of the law and gospel 
of Christ was put within their reach. 

Were the people satisfied withal? For the most part, they were 
probably too well satisfied. But here and there in the congrega- 
tion arose a cry for personal deliverance from sin and com- 
munion with the Heavenly Father which was met by the Church 
with no true answer. 


4. RISE AND GROWTH OF THE MONASTERY. 


Meanwhile the new and wonderful movement which we are 
now about to trace had asserted itself, and was going on un- 
checked, with increasing momentum, separate and apart from the 
general line of ecclesiastical advance. Side by side with the par- 


“Tn this way the parish became a prominent element in the later organi- 
zation of Christianity. The territorial idea completely ousted the original 
idea of a community or congregation. The members of the Church were 
not free to worship where they pleased, or to associate for religious purposes 
with whom they would. The framework was prepared for them in the 
parochial system. They were part of the flock not merely of one bishop, 
but of one presbyter. They were committed to his charge, and to no other 
could they properly look for teaching, for consolation, or for the sacraments.” 
(Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions,” p. 97.) 


74 Christianity as Organized 


ish arose the monastery. It was not planned for by the Church 
leaders, nor indeed by any one else. It was not called into exist- 
ence by the bishops. It came of itself. 

In a similar way independent associations, larger or smaller, 
well advised or ill advised, have arisen within the jurisdiction 
of the great religious organizations, in both ancient and modern 
times. Even paganism offers examples, such as the rise of Bud- 
dhism in Brahmanism and of the Greek “mysteries.” In Juda- 
ism may be noted “they that feared Jehovah” and “spake one 
with another’ in the days of the prophets, and later the sects of 
the Essenes and of the Pharisees; and in Christianity, the Broth- 
ers of the Common Life and similar societies in the Medieval 
Church, Methodism in the Church of England, and organizations 
for the “promotion of holiness” in the present-day Methodist 
Churches. Radically as these movements differ in many re- 
spects, one significant feature is common to them all: they rep- 
resent the striving of the individual after the satisfaction of a 
religious need which, in the larger organization, does not seem 
to him adequately provided for. 

As to the monastic passion in particular, let us bear in mind 
that when it began to take form in the Christian Church it was 
by no means a new thing in the history of religion. Already had 
it appeared in the religion of ancient Egypt, in Brahmanism, in 
Buddhism, and even to a small extent in Judaism. In Brahman- 
ism and Buddhism it had organized itself thoroughly and promi- 
nently. Indeed, it is a fundamental principle of both these faiths, 
with their hundreds of millions of adherents, that the whole 
world is but a painted show, a troublesome illusion, full of weari- 
ness and pain, from which the wise man will free himself by an 
ascetic discipline. This was taught as the one pathway of per- 
fection. Monasticism, therefore, is neither a proper product nor 
a peculiar by-product of Christianity. It crept into the Church 
“through a back door,” as some one has said, after its funda- 
mental principle of asceticism had been emphatically and uni- 


*Mal. iii. 16. 


Individualism: Monastery 75 


versally condemned in the Catholic condemnation of Gnosti- 
cism. 
The spirit of this movement in the early Church was a mixture 
of motives. One very prominent motive, no doubt, was the desire 
to find spiritual safety in solitude.” It was the case of a soldier 
willing to undergo the hardships and fatigue of the campaign, 
but refusing to take the risks of the battle field—tready to “endure 
hardness,” but not to “withstand in the evil day.” Hildebrand, 
one may believe, was well justified in his rebuke of the monas- 
tery, as he knew it in his own time: “Behold, those who seem to 
fear or to love God flee from the warfare of Christ, make sec- 
ondary the salvation of their brethren, and, loving only them- 
selves, seek a quiet retreat.” But no attempt to account for the 
free choice of the monastic life by fixing exclusive attention upon 
any one motive would be satisfactory. Various were the moral 
forces, some influential in one case and some in another, that for 
so many Christian generations made the haunts of asceticism suc- 
cessful competitors of the home, the social circle, and the parish 
church. What, in addition to the desire for safety, were they? 
The worthiest of them all was a keen sense of sinfulness.” Other 
motives were the dread of sensualism, the propensity to make 
- oneself worthy of God’s acceptance, weariness of the order of 
: society, love of retirement, the desire for a vocation, the fear of 
_ public responsibility, the joy of physical danger and self-denial 

or on the other hand the charm of an “order of the Peaceful” 


*Montalembert, to whom monasticism is the highest Christian ideal of 
life, defines the monk as simply under the control of the great Christian 
| motive of love for himself, for God, for the world: “A monk is a Christian 
who puts himself apart from the world, in order more surely to work out 
| his eternal salvation. He is a man who withdraws from other men, not in 
hatred or contempt of them, but for the love of God and his neighbor, and 
to serve them so much the better, as he shall have more and more purified 
and regulated his soul.” (“The Monks of the West,” Vol. I., p. 166.) 

2“Affrighted with my sins and the burden of my misery, I had cast in 
my heart and had purposed to flee to the wilderness; but Thou forbadest me, 
and strengthened me, saying, ‘Therefore Christ died for all, that they which 
live may now no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for 
them.” (Augustine, “Confessions,” X., 70.) 


I 


76 Christianity as Organized 


in an age of bloodshed and riot, the fanatical fancy of merit in 
self-inflicted suffering, the vague and indefinable longing for 
something diviner and more deeply satisfying— 


“Tnfinite passion and the pain 
Of finite hearts that yearn.” 


But from the standpoint of ecclesiastical polity we need note 
but one great motive, and that is religious individualism. Mis- 
taken, self-centered, passionately devoted to an unchristian ideal, 
monasticism was nevertheless a widely extended peaceable pro- 
test of the individual against mechanical uniformity and re- 
pressive authority. The monk would fain realize himself in free- 
dom. He would escape not only from the perilous allurements 
of ordinary human intercourse, but also from the oppression of 
an ecclesiastical Christianity. He would live his own life, seek- 
ing God in constant prayer and meditation, in the desert or the 
forest or the cliff side or the lonely mountain gorge." 


5. SOcIAL DEVELOPMENTS OF MONASTICISM. 


But the monk was not able very long to resist the tendency of 
all life toward organization. He must have an ecclesia even in 
the wilderness. How else, indeed, could he give anything like 
adequate recognition to the Christian law of love? And the 
freedom that is sought otherwise than through obedience to eter- 
nal law, is real slavery. 

“Love of my kind alone can set me free; 


Help me to welcome all that come to me, 
Not close my doors and dream solitude liberty.” 


It is well-nigh inevitable, therefore, that even the religious soli- 
taire should develop a social institution. 


1Christianity for the masses existed as something passively accepted, and 
not as the expression of individual decision. . . . The Church was in- 
volved in the thousand compromises arising out of this situation. Her pro- 
test against these, or rather her protest that something more individual and 
more decisive could be contemplated, was embodied mainly in Monasticism,” 
(Rainy, “The Ancient Catholic Church,” p. 520.) 


Individualism: Monastery 77. 


Three principal stages of this development may be noted: (1) 
the monk according to the original idea (yévos, ‘“‘alone’’), a her- 
mit, dwelling in his cave or hollow tree or miserable hut, with 
no companionship whatsoever; (2) the monk as a ccenobite, liv- 
ing with his brethren in a monastery, each monastery having its 
own government quite independent of the rest; (3) all the mon- 
asteries of the same order affiliated under a common government, 
moral rather than organic, with the mother monastery as its 
center.” 

Now the presiding officer of a monastery wielded well-nigh 
absolute authority; for the threefold monastic vow was poverty, 
chastity, and obedience. Where, then, it may be asked, was the 
freedom of the monk’s life as compared with that of membership 
in the parish church? First of all, it must be granted that he 
did return to organization, and hence to authority; he had to do 
so; he could not continue to live so unhuman a life as that of a 
hermit. But, on the other hand, liberty was found in the fact 
that he chose the monastic life freely and deliberately, and that 
its companionships were congenial. Besides, the monk had a 
voice in the selection of his own chief; for the abbot was not ap- 
pointed by the bishop, nor by any other authority, but was elected 
by the brothers of the monastery themselves. 

But these were not the chief things. The source of monastic 
freedom lay deeper. It was in that religious earnestness which 
clears and intensifies one’s sense of his own personality. The 
man who becomes aware of his eternal worth, notwithstanding all 
his unworthiness, who feels the intolerable burden of his sins and 
is bent on securing the salvation of his soul, cannot live any longer 
in the spirit of a slave to men. Standing before God he will 
awake to such a consciousness of selfhood as will set him free. 
Thus it was that the monk chose to live in a monastery and 


4“Thus arose huge organizations, which stretched their colonies across 
many countries, without weakening the connection between the members and 
the center.” (Schaff-Herzog, “Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,” Art. 
“Monastery.” ) 


78 Christianity as Organized 


obey his abbot, feeling that it was in this way he could best 
attain the personal end which he kept ever in view. 

Nor should it be supposed that the monk, like the black-veiled 
nun of a later day, was prohibited from passing beyond the walls 
of the monastery. On occasion he would go forth to visit a city, 
or influence the proceedings of an ecclesiastical council (some- 
times mischievously, no doubt), or attempt some other service in 
the wide and busy world. Even the hermits did so—as, for in- 
stance, Anthony, the father of monasticism, in his visits to Alex- 
andria. It was through the act of an Eastern monk also—if the 
story be true—that the Emperor Honorius was moved to abolish 
the most brutalizing, yet most popular, sport of the age. For when 
Telemachus, in the year 404—journeying, it is said, all the way 
from the East for the purpose—descended into the arena of the 
Roman amphitheater to part the contending gladiators, and died 
under the stones flung from the hands of bloodthirsty spectators, 
that martyr death proved the effectual condemnation of the crim- 
inal entertainment against which it bore witness. 


“His dream became a deed and woke the world.” 


Let it stand as an example, the most promising as well as the 
most dramatic, of the outside work of the Christian monk in that 
early age. 


6. REGULATION AND SUPERVISION OF THE MONASTERY. 


Evidently the daily life of the monastery must be brought un- 
der some sort of systematic regulation. In point of fact this 
regulation became very exact and minute. In the East the rule 
that universally prevailed and has substantially maintained itself, 
at least in theory, in the Orthodox Eastern Church unto the 
present day is that of Basil the Great (d. 380). This Rule, 
notwithstanding the real greatness, moral and intellectual, of its 
author, was, like himself, extremely ascetic: Only one meal a 
day, and that consisting of bread, water, and herbs; no sleep after 
midnight; both day and night divided off into short, definite 
periods ; manual labor alternating with devotional exercises. 


Individualism: Monastery 79 


In the East, indeed, monasticism has had practically no de- 
velopment since the early days. It has never given rise, as in 
the West, to different orders founded with different aims and for 
special lines of work—as, for instance, the Franciscans to care 
for the poor, the Dominicans to preach, the Carmelites to promote 
the practice of devotion to the Virgin Mary, and so on. It has 
ignored all knowledge and mental culture. Its chosen state is 
that of intellectual inertness and ignorance. When the great Greek 
theologian and scholar, Eugenios Bulgaris, made the effort to 
found a school at Mount Athos, the chief seat of Eastern monas- 
ticism, with its many monasteries and seven thousand monks, 
these monks angrily tore the building down, and it has not yet 
been rebuilt. Knowledge seems to be regarded as an element 
of that “evil world” from which the monk has fled for the saving 
of his soul. 

And so likewise, one might be tempted to say, is beneficent 
activity set at naught. For the Eastern monks do not go forth 
to teach or preach or tend the sick or in any way serve their 
fellow-men. In the language of the historian (and eulogist) of 
“The Monks of the West,” “the monks of the East sank grad- 
ually into nothingness.” For all that they speak of their life as 
the “angelic life” and their costume as the “angelic habit,” they 
are by no means to be called, like the angels of heaven, “minister- 
ing spirits, sent forth to do service.” 

In the West the most widely accepted Rule was that of Ben- 
edict. It, chiefly perhaps, won for its author the title, “Father 
of the Monks of the West.” At any rate, the founding of his 
monastery on Monte Casino in Southern Italy (529) and the 
framing of its Rule mark the beginning of effective organized 
monasticism in Europe. 

The Rule of Benedict—which for eight centuries, through the 
Age of Iron, had no rival in the West—though by no means 
lenient, was conceived in a much milder and more reasonable 
spirit than that of Basil. The monastery must contain within 
its inclosure not only gardens but also a mill and a bakery—all 


80 Christianity as Organized 


things necessary for subsistence; open-handed hospitality must 
be shown to strangers and the poor; the monk must own no 
property, not even the pen with which he did his writing; a 
novitiate of twelve months was required for admission into the 
community ; daily hours of outdoor labor, in summer and winter, 
were assigned—doubtless, as Jerome had said to Rusticus, “not 
so much for the sake of the body as to save the soul;” hours of 
daily study must also be observed—a most fruitful provision; 
and a somewhat nutritious diet was prescribed. 

But, on the other hand, the Rule of Benedict required the 
novice who applied for admission into the community to make 
a vow of “stability,” or perpetual residence. He must write it 
out with his own hand, and in the presence of his brethren lay 
it upon the altar. heretofore, while the rule of “once a monk 
always a monk” could claim the authority of even a General 
Council,” no distinct and regular vow to observe it had been pre- 
scribed by the monasteries themselves. But Benedict would lay 
upon the applicant, in a form not to be misunderstood or forgot- 
ten, the obligation of irrevocable self-commitment to the monastic 
life.’ 

And it will have to be added that the inhuman custom was 
adopted of receiving young children into the monastery, at the 
request of their parents, to be trained up for monkhood. 

In addition to the observance of the Rules of the Monastery, 
the use of certain instruments of self-torture, such as the hair 
shirt, the girdle and bracelets of sharp-pointed metal, and the 
whip, as a voluntary discipline, became a prominent feature of 
the monastic life in the Middle Ages. And this discipline of 
bodily self-torture is still commended by the Church of Rome 


1“Those who have been once received into the number of the clergy or 
have become monks must not serve in war or enter a secular calling; those 
who venture to do so, and do not repent so as to return to the calling which 
they had previously chosen for the sake of God, shall be anathematized.” 
(Council of Chalcedon, Can. 7.) 

2Montalembert, “The Monks of the West,” Vol. I., pp. 338, 339. 


Individualism: Monastery 81 


and practiced, to a greater or less extent, both within and with- 
out its “religious” houses.* 

But it is still likely to be asked: How can it be that monasticism, 
with its unnatural limitations upon the personal life and its soul- 
benumbing routine, did not violate the principles of freedom and 
individualism? The unequivocal answer is, that it did violate 
these principles, and as a consequence wrought a pitiful impov- 
erishment of the highest powers of its subjects. But such was 
not the spirit, however damaging may have been the methods, 
with which it began. Its initial significance was that of the in- 
dividual soul choosing its own abode, its own associations, its 
own life—turning away from the many that it might the better 
regulate and exercise itself. 

Monasteries multiplied by the thousand, from the shores of 
Palestine to the north of Scotland. Not confined to the country, 
their doors were opened in the heart of the city and under the 
shadow of cathedral churches to all who would follow what was 
regarded as the higher Christian life. Nor did they offer the 
privileges of membership to men only. Houses of nuns as well 
as of monks were organized. 

And though the Church, in its collective capacity, did not create 
the monasteries, it could not ignore them. It must utilize them 
sympathetically and wisely for its great general purpose. By no 
means must it permit them to drift away from its control—as the 
Church of England, centuries afterwards, permitted Methodism 


“The whip of discipline is of iron or of cords. The first sort are made 
of a bundle of little chains, sharp-pointed, and fastened to a chain which 
serves for brandishing them. The other sort consist of cords knotted and 
sometimes armed with iron points. The form and material are of little 
consequence. . . . The use of the whip of discipline is general in mon- 
asteries and religious communities, and is even more extensive than might 
be supposed among devotedly pious people of the world. The energy thus put 
forth to arm one against ore’s self and to tax one’s self with the goad of 
pain, becomes an excitant of religious ardor, and by this voluntary punish- 
ment it prevents and restrains the audacity of the flesh.” (Ribet, “L’ As- 
cétique Chrétienne” (1905), pp. 431, 433, published under the authority and 
commendation of a bref of Pope Leo XIII.) 


6 


82 Christianity as Organised 


to drift away. As one very important matter, it must see that 
they observed the sacraments. For the monastery, in its incep- 
tion, let it be remembered, was a lay institution; monks were, for 
the most part, laymen—even so powerful a leader as Benedict, 
for example—and felt no special dependence on the sacramental 
ministrations of the clergy." Their own religious services, like 
those of the apostolic churches and the reformed churches of to- 
day, consisted of common prayer and praise, with the reading of 
the Scriptures and exhortation. At times, indeed, they would 
attend the parish church, and receive the “sacrament of the altar” 
there. But the Church waited upon its self-secluded children 
with a better provision: the bishop would appoint them an or- 
dained chaplain, or would ordain one of their own number to the 
priesthood, so that each monastery might have the sacramental 
ministration within its own walls.” 

In the Middle Ages what had before been the exception be- 
came the rule—monks were all received into the priesthood. So 
in the Roman Church the monks are still the “regular” clergy. 
Naturally enough also, when the monks were made priests, they 
began to establish churches and to take charge of them. In Ger- 
many, we are told, thousands of medieval churches were at one 
time under the control of monasteries. Thus the monks’ work— 
if not their manner of life—came to be, so far, much the same 
as that of the “secular” priests. Here, too, we find the same 
thing to be true of Roman Catholic churches of the present day— 
many of them have monks for their pastors. 


“Tn the fourth century, the century of Athanasius and Augustine, when 
monasticism came to the birth, it seemed like a veritable stampede from the 
Catholic Church, as though that great creation of Christian energy were no 
better than the evil world from which escape was sought. For the thousands 
of men and of women also, who were then taking their flight from the world, 
left the Church behind them, carrying with them no bishops, making no pro- 
vision for ritual or sacrament. To these things they were indifferent, if not 
averse.” (Allen, “Christian Institutions,’ p. 139.) The whole chapter 
from which this passage has been taken is valuable for its account of mo- 
nasticism as an individualistic movement. 

2Cf. Telford, “History of Lay Preaching,” p. 40. 


Individualism: Monastery 83 


We are not to suppose, however, that the monastery always 
got on smoothly with the diocese. On the contrary, there was 
much friction between them. 

In the East, it is true, the matter was soon adjusted. For here 
the monasteries were brought under the bishop’s supervision and 
control; and, on the other hand, the large concession was granted 
them that none but a monk could be made a bishop. The epis- 
copal ruler, therefore, being chosen from their own body, they 
seem to have rested content with episcopal rule. But in the 
West—to which our attention will be confined for the rest of 
this chapter—no such adjustment was practicable. Bishop and 
abbot contended over questions of jurisdiction. Some of the en- 
actments of councils, in the effort to make peace between the two 
parties, were to the effect that no new monastery might be found- 
ed contrary to the bishop’s will; that, although the monastery was 
to elect its own abbot, the bishop might depose him for cause, 
but must allow him the right of appeal to the archbishop or to 
an assembly of abbots; that the bishop should not ordain a monk 
without the abbot’s consent, and should not forbid any of his 
priests or deacons to take the monastic vows. Nevertheless, what- 
ever may have been the theory or the enactments of councils, 
there is evidence that the episcopal control of the monastery was 
chiefly nominal. 

If, however, the monastery was denied the sympathy and har- 
monious cooperation of its diocesan bishop, it found a powerful 
friend and supporter in the Bishop of Rome. The pope abetted 
its cause in many ways. And this papal patronage may be ex- 
plained in some measure by the fact that many of the popes were 
themselves monks—the order of Benedictines furnishing no few- 
er than twenty-four in eight hundred years—and that in this 
number were Gregory the Great, father of the medieval papacy, 
and Gregory the Seventh, its greatest representative. But apart 
from this incidental fact, one may easily recognize a strong tie 
of sympathy between the papal throne and the cloister. Neither 
was national, patriotic, deferential and peaceable toward the 


84 Christianity as Organized 


state; both were cosmopolitan, world-wide, in their conceptions 
and aims. 

Now the typical bishop was “secular ;”’ he wished to stand well 
with the civil authorities; he would put forth no extreme views 
either of personal or of churchly authority; he would adjust the 
Church to the State. But the pope was not so—he would fain sit 
on high and rule the rulers of the nations; and the monk was a 
citizen of the earth, at home under any flag, under any sky; or, 
to speak more accurately, equally homeless everywhere. They 
both sought, therefore, to bring men, without respect to race or 
nation, absolutely under the dominion of their idea of catholic 
Christianity. 

Accordingly, we find the pope inclining more to the cause of the 
monk than to that of the bishop. In the tenth century he ex- 
empted the powerful monastery of Cluny in France from all epis- 
copal control except his own; and he did the same thing for most 
of the later orders—such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans 
—that were founded from time to time. We also see the monks, 
on their part, becoming the most zealous of all defenders of the 
papal prerogatives. It was mainly through Boniface, the English 
missionary monk, for illustration, not only that Germany was 
converted from paganism, but also that both Germany and France 
were Romanized. Having been made by the pope a missionary 
bishop, he was the first bishop that took the oath of obedience 
to Rome. Also, when Hildebrand undertook to enforce the rule 
of celibacy upon the secular priests, and bishops refused to assist, 
the monks used their whole influence in favor of the unchristian 
and heartless undertaking. Still again, at the beginning of the 
Reformation, it was chiefly the monks who supported the trem- 
bling papal throne. 

It may be said, indeed, that papacy and monasticism arose, pre- 
vailed, and declined together. 


7. Monastic LEARNING AND MISSIONARY ZEAL. 


The two distinctive forces of the monastery in the days of its 
glory—say, from the sixth to the tenth century—were learning 


Individualism: Monastery 85 


and missionary zeal. Monks, rather than the secular clergy, were 
the scholars, the teachers, the writers of the time. Many a pre- 
cious manuscript of biblical or classic or patristic literature did 
they keep safe amid the ravages of barbarism. Many a pupil of 
theirs became eminent as a leader in Church or State. It is not 
an altogether exceptional picture, for instance, that has come 
down to us from the eighth century, that of the venerable Bede, 
the most renowned scholar of Western Europe, spending his days 
from youth to old age in the monastery of Jarrow on the Tyne; 
refusing the offer of a bishopric; producing numerous commen- 
taries, biographies, and books of science, according to the learn- 
ing of his day; writing “The Ecclesiastical History of the English 
Nation ;’ occupying the very last hours of a saintly and laborious 
life in dictating the first translation of “The Gospel According 
to John” into the English tongue. It represents what was going 
on to a less extent in many another monastic brotherhood of a 
barbarous and ignorant age. 

Even the Franciscans, whose founder, himself almost illiterate, 
feared and disparaged learning as an enemy to humility of spirit, 
gained distinction in the thirteenth century for the establishment 
of schools and the development of scholarship. Roger Bacon 
was a Franciscan. 

But the greater glory of the monastery was its missionary ac- 
tivity. Through the seven hundred years that elapsed from the 
time of Constantine’s patronage of Christianity till the ecclesias- 
tical conversion of all the prominent peoples of Europe, monasti- 
cism was the chief converting agency. Not from the cathedral 
but from the cloister went out the missionary to Northern Eu- 
rope, in the face of incredible hardship and danger, to teach the 
truth of Christ, as he had been able to receive it, to pagan peoples. 
The lover of solitude had become a lover of souls. 

Of similar missionary significance was that special develop- 
ment of monasticism which appeared in the thirteenth century in 
the rise of the preaching friars—namely, the Franciscans and the 
Dominicans. In one respect, Francis and Dominic imposed a 
stricter rule upon their followers than that of the older orders. 


86 Christianity as Organized 


For while these older orders forbade their members to hold 
property individually, the monastery itself was bound by no 
vow of poverty, and, as a matter of fact, in numerous cases grew 
very wealthy. But the Franciscans and Dominicans were for- 
bidden to hold property either individually or as a society; the 
monastery was to have no resources of its own. Yet the brothers 
were to lead a distinctively busy and enterprising life. 

When asked whether prayer or preaching is more pleasing to 
God, Francis answered: “It is a hard question, but one considera- 
tion is decisive. The only Son of God came down from the bosom 
of the Father for the salvation of souls. We, too, must follow his 
pattern. We must give up our quiet and go forth to toil.” Ac- 
cordingly, the Franciscans might be seen traveling and preach- 
ing far and wide, and in supposed imitation of the example of the 
Apostles, depending for support upon the alms of the people. 
Clad in coarse frocks, they went gently begging their way. And 
that they might thus go preaching everywhere unembarrassed by 
ecclesiastic restrictions, they were not only entirely freed by the 
pope from the bishops’ control, but also authorized to enter any 
parish with or without the consent of its priest, and teach, or 
say mass, or hear confessions and grant absolution. And every- 
where they got a hearing; for their manner of life, so unlike that 
of the average parish priest, made the impression of enthusiastic 
devotion to the good of others. 

Moreover, they fixed their homes in the cities rather than in 
the country. There the Franciscans built their convents—not in 
the secluded valley or other rural retreat, as was preferably done 
by the older orders, but in the midst of the people. Theirs were 
not the pure and peaceful surroundings of the agriculturalist— 
gardens, orchards, meadows, and forests: they were slum dwell- 
ers, “the Salvation Army of the thirteenth century.” 

Now between the first, or hermit, idea of monasticism and the 
last, or missionary, idea—for example, between Simon Stylites 
on his pillar, Thrice ten years, 


Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs. 
A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud, 


Individualism: Monastery 87 


and Francis of Assisi proclaiming a gospel of love wherever he 
could find a handful of hearers—the difference is well-nigh a 
contrast. Here certainly was development in the right direc- 
tion. 

And there was at least the suggestion of a larger development. 
Under the influence and direction of Francis, a Second Order 
{namely, of nuns) arose, and then a Third Order, the Tertiaries. 
These were neither monks nor nuns, but men and women at home, 
in the common ways of life, who pledged themselves to follow 
Francis’s Rule as to the spirit though not as to the letter. They 
were instructed to serve God in the home and the family as de- 
votedly as the monk was set apart to serve in the cloister. The 
Third Order, no less than the First and the Second, were to offer 
their daily life as a service to God. 

Indeed, according to Francis’s latest biographer, this larger fol- 
lowing of Tertiaries—which is reported to be showing signs of 
revival at the present time—represented the founder’s original 
idea. That is to say, his idea was not so much to found an order 
as to extend the religion of love among the people.” If this be 
the true interpretation of Francis’s mind, it marks the very farthest 
advance of monasticism beyond its starting point. For here is 
not simply the constant doing of missionary work, but essentially 
the same Christian perfection to be followed in all circumstances, 
callings, and situations of life. 


8. DECLINE OF MONASTICISM. 


As to the cloister itself, we are not to imagine it to have ever 
been a charmed inclosure which the moral abominations of the 
world were effectually forbidden to enter. [Even in its earlier 
history it sometimes offered no uncongenial soil to vice and evil 
passions. There were disorderly monks, and monks of scandalous 
life. Jerome, enthusiastic promoter of the monastery as he was, 
tells of evil-minded monks of his early day “worming their way 
into favor with the rich, and pretending to fast, while they re- 


1Sabatier, “Life of St. Francis of Assisi,” pp. 155, 156. 


88 Christianity as Organized 


paid themselves with nightly revelry.” Efforts at reform were 
made, especially by the monastery of Cluny, founded in the early 
part of the tenth century, which would seem to have been for 
several medieval centuries a genuine reforming agency. 

But the later history of the monastic orders, without excep- 
tion, was marked by gross moral deterioration. Fanaticism might 
have been expected to appear from the first; but it became cold- 
blooded and inhuman. Even the murder of Hypatia by the mad 
monks of Alexandria was a merciful procedure as compared with 
the diabolical cruelty of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, in 
which the Dominican friars were leading spirits and the Fran- 
ciscans also sought and obtained a part. 

Nor was murderous fanaticism by any means all. These same 
followers of Dominic and of Francis became notorious for un- 
cleanness and rascality. They made their way into a neighbor- 
hood, a church, a home, to debauch and to rob. They were 
looked upon by the people with disgust mingled with dread. 
They became “a proverb and a byword.” Yet they could be 
neither avoided nor resisted; for did they not as priests hold in 
their hands, to wield at will, superhuman powers? Better 
equipped corrupters of society could not easily be imagined. 

Under whatever “rule” conducted, the cloister had degenerated 
into a center of vice, a sorrow and loathing to all right-thinking 
people. And it never wholly recovered the lost ground. Still 
an institution of the Roman, as of the Eastern, Church, it has 
long since been shorn of its strength. When, only a few decades 


*Suggestive in more ways than one was such an enactment as the follow- 
ing, which was brought forward by the Emperor Marcian at Chalcedon in 
451: “Those who lead a true and genuine monastic life shall receive due 
honor. As, however, some, assuming the monastic state for a pretense, con- 
fuse the affairs of Church and State, and go about in the cities indiscrimi- 


nately, . . . the Synod decrees, . . . that the monks of each neigh- 
borhood and city shall be subject to the bishop, that they love quiet, and give 
themselves only to fasting and prayer, . . . that they do not encumber 


themselves with ecclesiastical affairs or take part in them except when, in 
case of necessity, they are required to do so by the bishop of the city.” 
(“Council of Chalcedon,” Can. 4.) 


Individualism: Monastery 89 


ago, the monasteries of Italy were suppressed by the civil gov- 
ernment, the reigning pontiff, Pius [IX.—though in an encyclical 
letter he had described the religious orders as “the bulwark and 
ornament of the Christian religion as well as of civil society’— 
is reported to have said: “It was the devil’s work; but the good 
God will turn it into a blessing, since their destruction was the 
only reform possible to them.” 


Monasteries of the present day, generally speaking, comprise 
three classes of members—namely, priests, students for the priest- 
hood, and lay brothers. 

The outside work is done by the priests. They usually have, 
in connection with the monastery, a congregation of their own 
to minister to, in public and in private, just as the secular priest 
ministers in his parish. They may also take the places of parish 
priests temporarily absent from their charges, and are called upon 
to preach special sermons, here and there, and to hold “retreats.” 
A still more important service of the regular, or monastic, priest 
is that of a missioner. Nearly, if not quite, all monasteries, it 
seems, have one or more priests, probably their most effective 
preachers, who are often absent holding missions in different 
parts of the country. 

As to the moral life of the monastery of to-day, such trust- 
worthy evidence as is available seems to show it to be not of a 
high type, and yet by no means so low as some of its adverse 
critics have pictured it. 


VI. 


INDIVIDUALISM: THE PROTESTANT CON- 
GREGATION. 


THE stronger the personality, the stronger the possible char- 
acter. The Church, therefore, in the formation of Christian char- 
acter, is not to hinder but on the contrary to help the growth 
of personality. And in order to do this, she will have to be, in 
connection with all her governing and caretaking and sociality, 
a giver and guardian of liberty. For liberty is the very air which 
a person must breathe if he would be a person indeed. To be- 
come himself, not the replica of some greater and original picture, 
not the echo of some living voice, he must be free, standing strong 
in his own will and individuality. 

The school-teacher finds it so, and feels himself amply re- 
warded when he can educate the pupil to regulate his conduct by 
principles of his own rather than by fear of the master or the 
rules of the school. When John Wesley’s famous Kingswood 
School required that the boys should spend their whole time, by 
day and night, in the presence of a master, it was attempting to 
purchase protection against youthful vices at the cost of the re- 
pression rather than the guidance of personality. True, it is a 
painfully difficult problem to determine just how much to trust 
the young and immature without immediate personal supervision ; 
but assuredly it is a mistake not to trust them at all. One must 
gradually learn to walk alone, even at the cost of an occasional 
fall. And the teacher has no greater joy than to become useless 
to the pupil. Or take the case of the parent. He finds it wise to 
permit the child to do many things of himself and in his own 
way, rather than take them out of his hand and continually bid 
him: ‘Do it thus, as I do.” The civil government, likewise, suc- 
ceeds in building up the finest citizenship only through the prac- 
tice of democratic principles. The Church, therefore, in its 


(90) 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation gI 


sphere, as a guide and mother of souls, was not likely to find it 
otherwise. 

But, as we have seen, the method of the Church, listening as 
she did to other voices than those of Jesus and his Apostles, be- 
came in great measure unfavorable to the spiritual freedom and 
individualism of the soul. It was against her barren or oppressive 
ecclesiasticism that the Christian monk, not directly but indirect- 
ly, not with his lips but with his life, protested. For its asser- 
tion, then, of personal spiritual powers in an age of civil and 
ecclesiastic imperialism, as well as for its testimony to the worth 
of the lowest-born man in the later age of feudalism, and for 
many useful and beneficent works, Christian monasticism may 
claim the grateful recognition of the world. 

But its abounding evils were inevitable. They were the proper 
fruits of its misconception of the Christian gospel. For it knew 
not the mind of the Son of Man. Setting itself against the com- 
mon sympathies of humanity, despising the Divine institution of 
the family, bidding men run away from the moral dangers and 
perplexing problems of society, instead of facing them with a 
strong and patient spirit in the name of the living God, it was 
foredoomed to failure. 


I. THE REFORMATION PROTEST AGAINST INVASION OF 
PERSONALITY. 


But a direct and far more formidable protest, which for many 
a year had been gathering unconscious strength, found eventually 
a compelling voice. For religion was not dead. Christianity had 
not withered down into a sapless root. There was deep mystic 
piety here and there. Strong demands for a moral reformation 
of the Church had been made, in various forms, again and again. 
These demands were lightly or scornfully disregarded by the hier- 
archy till at last reformation in both doctrine and morals broke 
forth as revolution. 

Whatever true individualism was embodied, either in the ear- 
lier or the later forms of monasticism, now appeared, free from 
ascetic observances, in the churches of Protestantism. For the 


92 Christianity as Organized 


Protestant Christian asserted independence not by flight but by 
resistance. He won his peace with a sword. He threw off the 
spiritual despotism of the Church, denying the false assumptions 
of pope and council." Not merely instituting, like the monk, a 
homiletic worship of his own apart from the services of the par- 
ish church, he rejected these services. Not divesting himself of 
the common human instincts and relationships in order to care 
for his own soul, he attempted the higher task of building up a 
Christian character with the aid of these instincts and relation- 
ships. Rejecting self-effacement, he made choice of self-control. 
Earnestly desiring to be a spiritual freeman, he would fain find 
his freedom in taking the everyday world as it was and trying 
to make it somewhat better. Such was the ideal and the en- 
deavor. 

Hence the Protestant churches were not organized in some 
chosen place of retreat, but, like the existing parish churches, in 
the midst of society. Not the secluding convent wall, but the 
lampstand, bearing the lighted lamp, may be taken as their sym- 
bol. And we are reminded that the same was a New Testament 
symbol of the churches. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that, while individualism did 
find something of a nursery in monasticism at its best estate, 
Protestantism has been its trajning school and the modern world 
its field of action. 

Nor can it be regarded as an accidental or unmeaning circum- 
stance that the leader of the Reformation should have come out 


*“Tt [the Reformation] was in its essence the assertion of the principle of 
individuality—that is to say, of true spiritual freedom. Hitherto the personal 
consciousness had been a faint and broken reflection of the universal; obe- 
dience had been held the first of religious duties; truth had been conceived 
as something external and positive, which the priesthood, who were its stew- 
ards, were to communicate to the passive layman, and whose saving virtue 
lay not in being felt and known by him to be the truth, but in a purely 
formal and unreasoning acceptance. . . . It was proclaimed that the in- 
dividual spirit, while it continued to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had 
nevertheless an independent existence as a center of self-issuing force, and 
was to be in all things active rather than passive.” (Bryce, “The Holy 
Roman Empire,” pp. 328, 329.) 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 93 


of a monastery. Note the representative character of Martin 
Luther’s personal experience and course of action. When the 
talented young student, looking forward to the profession of 
law, became anxiously concerned about his spiritual welfare, 
the course which seemed to him most truly Christian was to as- 
sume the monastic vows. Therein was the way to the “religious” 
life. He would spend his time in prayer and study, practicing 
divers austerities, doing many good works, and thus working 
out his salvation. But having found the Bible and made it his 
companion and guide, he disqualified himself thereby for con- 
ventual restrictions. The Bible opened to him a higher path of 
life which he must needs pursue. 

At first there was no thought of opposing the theology of the 
Church. His own theology was the outgrowth of personal expe- 
rience. He had received the peace of forgiveness as the free gift 
of God in Jesus Christ before ever his voice was lifted up against 
the dogma of the merit of good works. But at all hazards he 
must be true to his convictions. So therefore the great individu- 
alist, delivered through the gospel of justification by faith alike 
from priestly domination and from self-imposed ascetic obser- 
vances, went forth to lead all like-minded souls into the liberty 
wherewith Christ had made them ‘free. 

It was the history in miniature of an age-long religious move- 
ment. For generation after generation the more earnest spirits 
had sought to realize the true Christian life in monastic seclusion. 
Now through the open Bible they would find it, without either 
priest or cloister, in immediate access to God in Christ and in the 
brotherhood of those to whom his truth had been a word of re- 
lease to souls “bound in affliction and iron.” Luther was a figure 
of both the historic failure and success of monasticism. 

And when the “poor little monk” stood before the Emperor of 
the Holy Roman Empire, at the Diet of Worms, the historic 
scene which that august assembly witnessed was solidarity and 
individualism, authority and liberty, ecclesiasticism and the reli- 
gion of Jesus, face to face, in tremendous conflict, 


94 Christianity as Organized 


2. THe RoMAN CATHOLIC REACTION. 


Christian individualism won the day. But the victory was not 
complete, and there was a sharp reaction. All were not prepared 
to follow the freedom of conscience and the right of private judg- 
ment. In truth it is not likely in any age to be an alluring 
pathway. On the contrary, it is often steep and irksome. It 
is an ascent to greatness of personality, where ascending is climb- 
ing. To think is a difficult operation of the mind. To judge 
and decide and act for one’s self, day by day, is not in the majori- 
ty of cases to take the line of least resistance. It demands a more 
strenuous exertion of one’s powers than to follow a prescribed 
routine. Thus it comes to pass that the slave of a kindly master 
may find himself in love with his chains. The emancipated He- 
brews, rather than retain the gift of freedom with its attendant 
hardships, hunger and war, were fain to retrace their steps, if it 
might be made possible, to the land of the brickyard and the task- 
master. The converted Galatians, used to the spiritual inertness 
of the old legalism, were ready to entangle themselves again with 
the yoke of bondage. Similarly among the sympathizers with 
the great forward movement of the Church in the sixteenth cen- 
tury toward “the freedom of a Christian man,” there were those 
who lapsed into the old passivity and submission. The magic of 
absolutism bore them down. 

Besides, not a few of those who did maintain the claim of free- 
dom of conscience and the right of private judgment abused their 
freedom by violent contentions and party spirit. Conservative 
minds, therefore, seeing the dangers threatening the way of the 
Reformers, were repelled. They feared a disastrous breaking up 
of the social order in both Church and State. Thus it was that 
Protestantism suffered a serious check; and Romanism, not yield- 
ing an inch of ground to the Reformers’ demands in either theol- 
ogy or ritual, defined its dogmas and fixed its organization by 
the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent, more precisely 
than this had ever before been done. 

But the extremest form of reaction, and at the same time a 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 95 


leading agency in the general reactionary movement, was that of 
a certain religious society organized under monastic vows. A 
brave and romantic Spanish soldier, Ignatius Loyola, severely 
wounded in battle, resolved while lying on his bed of pain and 
reading the “Lives of the Saints” in the castle of his forefathers, 
to turn away from all worldly pursuits and spend the remainder 
of his days as a knight of religion. The soldier of Spain, form- 
ing his imagination with stories of medieval chivalry, ambitious 
of knightly achievements, began to turn all the ardent devotion 
of his nature toward the career of a soldier of the Church. He 
went into retirement; instituted a severe ascetic drill of ‘“Spirit- 
ua] Exercises;’ made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; studied the- 
ology for seven years in the University of Paris; gathered about 
him, through his intense yet regulated enthusiasm, his knowl- 
edge of the human heart, and his power of command, a little 
circle of companions or followers; together with them took the 
vows of poverty and chastity; and on a visit to Rome secured 
the formal authorization of his proposed society in a bull of 
Pius III. (September 27, 1540). ‘“To those,” he said, “who ask 
what we are, we will reply, We are the soldiers of the Holy 
Church, and we form “The Society of Jesus.’” Such was the 
origin of Jesuitism.* 

The Society is under the government of a General whose power is auto- 
cratic. He is elected by delegates convened in the city of Rome from the 
provinces throughout the world. He appoints the subordinate officers, de- 


cides upon the admission of candidates for membership, dispenses with the 
observance of rules, requires obedience without murmur, argument, or hesi- 


“Tn forming a judgment upon the fourth vow [see page 96] of the 
Jesuits, and generally upon many other points peculiar to the society, it 
will be well to bear in mind that the primary aim of their founders was to 
assume an attitude in every way opposed to whatever was Protestant. Prot- 
estants assailed the Center of Unity, and aimed at destroying the papacy. 
The Jesuits on this very account bound themselves indissolubly to the Holy 
See. Protestants enlarged the bounds of liberty till it became license; the 
Jesuits bound themselves by their Rule to unconditional obedience, even sac- 
rificing their individual wills to the interests of the Society.” (Alzog, “Uni- 
versal Church History [Roman Catholic],” Vol. IIL. p. 380.) 


96 Christianity as Organized 


tation, on the part of his subjects, in any command that he may issue. He 
is served by a cabinet of assistants. 

The territory of the Society is divided into provinces, over each of which 
is appointed a Provincial, and under these are the Superiors of the local 
establishments. The General’s residence is in Rome, where he receives reg- 
ular reports from his subordinates, and whence he issues his commands to 
the ends of the earth—wielding the Society as “a sword whose hilt is in 
Rome and whose point is everywhere.” 

Admission to the Society is by way of a novitiate of two years. Through 
a course of prescribed daily exercises the will of the novitiate is to be 
broken, so that he shall no longer think or act for himself, but only as a 
piece of the ecclesiastic machinery. Having completed his novitiate and 
taken the oaths of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he becomes a Scholastic, 
and passes through several years of study; then through a second novitiate, 
of one year’s length; then (unless he become a Lay Brother) he is ordained 
to the priesthood, and made either a Spiritual Coadjutor or a Professed; if 
a Coadjutor, he will devote himself to teaching or pastoral work, and if a 
Professed, he will take as a fourth vow readiness to go as a missionary to 
any part of the world at the command of the pope. 

The Professed are relatively few in number, but great in power; for 
not only do they compose the Congregation, by which the General is elected, 
but it is also out of their number that the General, the Assistants, and the 
Provincials are selected.* 


In choosing members for the order, mental ability and social 
accomplishments are highly regarded. It was alert, skillful, in- 
telligent workers that Loyola wanted, not weaklings or recluses. 

But they must think as they were bidden, or not at all. “The 
sacrifice of the intellect” seems to have been even a favorite 
phrase among them. Let the rational soul be discrowned for the 
love of Rome. All powers, gifts, aptitudes, experiences, and ac- 
complishments must be used in accordance with the will of the 
superior. This was the vow that was emphasized above all oth- 
ers—blindfold obedience. 

Does this vow bind the Jesuits to obey the command to com- 
mit an act which their own consciences condemn as criminal or 
sinful? It is not so written in their Constitutions. But it is 
written there that they “should permit themselves to be moved 
and directed by Divine Providence through their superiors, just 


*Alzog, “Universal Church History,” Vol. IIL, p. 377-380; Hatisser, “The 
Period of the Reformation” (1885), pp. 265-273. 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 97 


as if they were a dead body; or as an old man’s staff, which 
serves him who holds it in his hand wherever and in whatever 
thing he wishes to use it.” Loyola also gave this rule for the 
guidance of his disciples: ““When it seems to me that I am com- 
manded by my superior to do a thing that my conscience revolts 
against as sinful, and my superior judges otherwise, it is my duty 
to yield my doubts to him unless I am otherwise restrained by 
evident reasons.” That the practical outcome of such instruc- 
tions should commonly, if not invariably, be the surrender of the 
conscience within to the powerful personal authority without, is 
what might be very reasonably expected." Conscience cannot 
survive the destruction of personality. A condition of its health- 
ful activity is free individual choice in harmony with its own 
inner and divine commands. 

Accordingly it is a strangely mixed scene which the history of 
the Jesuit-idea has disclosed. We see the followers of Loyola 
going forth in all the world, on any service however perilous or 
painful, among heretics or heathens, perishing of hardship or 
disease, tortured to death by savages, giving themselves up to 
live or die in absolute, unquestioning devotion to their idea and 
their chief. We see them winning as father confessors the favor 
of princes, admired and sought after as educators of youth, at- 
taining in some instances to high scholarship in mathematics and 
antiquarian literary research; gaining control of great universi- 
ties; exercising a predominant influence in the Council of Trent, 
which defined the doctrines of the Church, and in the Vatican 
Council, which declared the infallibility of the pope; stemming 
the tide of Protestantism, and even leading back to the Church 


“What the obedience of a Jesuit especially should be to, the Church of 
Rome may apply also to his obedience to the superior of his order. In the 
‘Spiritual Exercises’ Loyola lays down the proposition: “That we may be 
entirely of the same mind with the Church, if she have defined anything to 
be black which may appear to our minds to be white, we ought to believe 
it to be as she has pronounced it.’ Under these circumstances it would be 
manifestly impossible to see anything to be sinful or wrong in what is com- 
manded, no matter what the command may be.” (Walsh, “The Jesaitz in 
Great Britain,” p. 297.) 


zi 


98 Christiamty as Organized 


of Rome countries—such, for example, as Belgium and Southern 
Germany—in which its supremacy had been broken. 

At the present time they seem to be the power behind Syllabus, 
Encyclical, and allocutions of Pius X. for the crushing of Mod- 
ernism. They have indeed been “the thundering legion” of the 
papal army. “It was an evil day for new-born Protestantism,” 
says the historian of the Jesuits in North America, “when a 
French artilleryman fired the shot that struck down Ignatius 
Loyola in the breach of Pampeluna.””* 

On the other hand, by reason of their deliberate and shameless 
intrigues, equivocations, peculations, conspiracies, and crimes, 
we see them banished from the various countries of Europe (even 
from the land of the Spanish Inquisition), their organization 
dissolved by a papal decree for a period of forty-one years (1773- 
1814), and their name (taken as it is from that holy Name 
which is above all others) passing into men’s ordinary speech as 
a synonym of the most detestable trickery and conscienceless 
propagandism. 


3. FaLsE SECURITY AGAINST THE DANGERS OF INDIVIDUALISM. 


It is still the law of Roman Catholicism that the hierarchy shall 
order all things for the laity, whose part is to receive and obey. 
“When the mother stretches forth her hand,’ says Archbishop 
Gibbons, ‘‘the child follows unhesitatingly. The Christian should 
have for his spiritual Mother all the simplicity, all the credulity, 
I might say, of a child, guided by the instincts of faith.”* The 
child will believe anything his mother, no matter how ignorant 
or superstitious, may tell him; and such is the “credulity” 
which the Christian must show toward the Church. Does he 
sometimes hear another voice, bidding him be indeed a very babe 


1Parkman, “Jesuits in North America,” p. 8. 

2“Since its restoration, it has been banished for a longer or shorter time 
from Italy, Spain, France, Russia, Switzerland, Belgium, Bavaria, Austria, 
the German Empire, and various Roman Catholic States of America.” 
(Sheldon, “Church History,” Vol. III., p. 411.) 


“The Faith of Our Fathers” (1904), p. 73. a x 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 99 


“in malice’ though not “in mind’—‘“but in mind, be men?” 
Does he begin to think for himself about the revealed will of 
his heavenly Father? -Forthwith not the guidance and admoni- 
tion of an enlightened mother, but the terrors of an august per- 
sonalized superstition are directed against him. They waken his 
fears and cripple his will. 

Let a man believe his personal salvation to be in the hands of 
a certain other man, and his spiritual subjection to that feilow- 
man is complete. Let a whole nation or millions of people 
throughout the world believe in the reality of the pope’s anath- 
ema, and how many will have the hardihood to oppose his de- 
crees in either doctrine or conduct? Fines and prisons and scaf- 
folds are not to be taken account of in comparison with the su- 
pernatural terrors that are wielded, professedly, by the hierarchy 
of Rome. The free spirit cannot breathe beneath their weight. 

The internal government of the hierarchy itself is, in its turn, 
a system of absolutism. The faithful priest is not to think and 
act for himself in the name of the one Lord Jesus Christ. For 
him, as for the laity, there is an ecclesiastic “keeper of the con- 
science” and of the reason. As in an army, enforced uniformity 
represses individual initiative and freedom. 

Now that individualism has its own dangers, there can be no 
doubt whatsoever. But the true security against them is not to 
strike down the individual. One’s feet sometimes stumble or go 
astray; therefore let them be cut off? Individuality means initi- 
ative, and initiative—somewhat like “‘variation’” in the animal 
world—means progress. To deny liberty to reason and con- 
Science, then, is to put an arrest upon the progress of the soul. 
Indeed, it is to assail essential elements of personality. Is it done 
in the interest of faith? Such a faith is not fixed upon the God 
of the reason and the conscience. It distrusts him. Says Cardi- 
nal Newman, toward the close of his Apologia, speaking of the 
time when he found an end to the trials of his mind by submis- 
sion to Rome: “Since the time that I became a Catholic, 


oT Cor xive 20; 


100 Christianity as Organized 


I have been in perfect peace and contentment. I have never had 
a doubt.” Nor will any other man who makes that sacrifice which 
is perhaps the easiest of all to most men, “the sacrifice of the 
intellect” in matters of religion.’ 


But the peace that comes thus—that comes through the sub- 
stitution of authority for truth, and the cessation of rational and 


reverent thought—is too dearly bought. There is a pathetic 
calm on the face of the dead. 


4. THE PROTESTANT SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM. 


Freedom and authority, liberty of the spirit and rational out- 
ward order, are not contradictory principles. But they are op- 
posites. And the question which has been laid upon the heart of 
organized Christianity is, how to maintain the divine harmony of 


these two principles, so that each shall help, not hinder, the 
other. 


Protestantism, in making its answer to the question, calls for 
a large measure of liberty in thought and action. It is more a 
quickening than a leveling force.” It accentuates unity of faith 
rather than theological uniformity. Men have found themselves 
able to follow, in the same spirit of faith and obedience, the same 
Divine Christ, and yet to differ widely in opinion as to Christian 
ordinances, ecclesiastic economy, and sundry points of theology. 


It was another noted convert to Rome who made a similar assertion as 
to the absence of even a momentary shadow of doubt after his submission to 
what he accepted as “the one only Catholic and Roman Church:” “I could 
as soon believe that two and two made five as that the Catholic faith is false.” 
The explanation (assuming no extravagance in the assertion) would seem 
to be purely psychological and not extremely difficult. When a woman of 
more than ordinary intelligence, who had recently professed Romanism, was 
asked how she could reconcile her mind to certain irrational dogmas, she 
replied: “I do not exercise my mind upon them; I suspend my reason on all 
questions on which the Church has pronounced its decision.” 

“Tf you legislate too much, you may so weaken individual responsibility 
as to do more harm than good. Once let the idea go forth that it is the 
duty of the State to take care of everybody, and everybody will cease to take 
care of himself.” (Hadley, “Railroad Transportation,” p. 49.) Is not the 
case of the Church and her children essentially the same? 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 101 


They have claimed the right to differ thus, and to embody their 
differences in separate organizations. So the Lutheran, the Re- 
formed, the Anglican, the Free, and many other churches have 
taken form and appeared. In them all, in all the “variations of 
Protestantism’”—which, in a general way, were foretokened by 
the various orders of medieval monasticism—a true principle of 
individualism has been more or less fittingly illustrated. 

It would be going much too far, however, to say that the 
Protestant churches have always solved this question of author- 
ity and freedom rightly, either in theory or in practice. At 
times—especially in the earlier periods of their history—they 
have taken over and attempted to perpetuate, under other forms, 
the governmental idea of the Church of Rome. They have de- 
graded authority into intolerance. They have misused discipline 
to the hurt of personality. Presbyter has played priest. 

Also, the new-found liberty of Protestantism, by a not un- 
natural recoil, sometimes ran into a certain sort of unsocial li- 
cense. In our own time and in all times, indeed, individualism 
has not infrequently been distorted into egotism and social in- 
difference. Individuality may do scant justice to interdepend- 
ence. Personality may be perverted into a justification of schism 
and sectarianism. It has been too often forgotten that inde- 
pendency without vital fellowship is a false individualism. Hence 


*“Man was, as it were, ushered [by the Reformation] straight into the 
presence of his Creator, with no human intermediary; and now for the first 
time large numbers of rude and uncultured people yearned toward the mys- 
teries of absolute spiritual freedom. The isolation of each person’s religious 
responsibility from that of his fellow, rightly understood, was a mecessary 
condition of the highest spiritual progress. But the notion was new to the 
world, it was bare and naked, not yet overgrown with pleasant instincts; 
and even in kindly natures individuality showed itself with a hard sharpness 
of outline, while the coarser natures became self-conscious and egotistic. . . . 
Individualism had to be purified and softened by much tribulation; it had to 
become less self-assertive without becoming weaker, before new imstincts 
could grow up around it to revive in a higher form what was most beautiful 
and most solid in the old collective tendencies.” (Marshall, “Principles of 
Economics,” pp. 36, 37.) 


102 Christianity as Organized 


too many and far too unfriendly have been the divisions of Prot- 
estantism. 

Both these errors have often been found and exposed in that 
stalwart type of the Protestant development of individualism, the 
Puritan. But it is only fair that we should remember that here 
they are the errors of an essentially strong, courageous, devout, 
and conscientious character. The Puritan would not drift with 
the tide. He would not lose himself in the mass. He would not 
have his conscience toned down into silence by the maxims or 
fashions or rewards of worldly society. Why? Because in the 
whole of life he was conscious of his own proper personal rela- 
tion to God. Hence his passionate and persistent contention for 
religious liberty. Hence the touch of sublimity upon his char- 
acter. Hence his powerful and productive personality. Not un- 
fitting does it seem that both the world’s great Christian epic 
and the world’s great allegory of the individual Christian’s life 
should have risen out of Puritanism: one the “precious life- 
blood” of a refined and cultured yet lonely spirit who was, “before 
all things else, a prophet of individual freedom in thought ;” the 
other, the self-expression of an unschooled villager, tender-heart- 
ed but with a face like flint against the enemies of the soul—a 
prisoner for conscience’ sake, who through long years of bitter 
persecution ceased not to tell the things which he had heard and 
seen in the freedom of the King’s highway. 

Now that Protestantism should not always have kept itself free 
from the damaging errors of intolerance or social indifference 
is not due to any inherent weakness in its main creative idea as 
shown in the life and teaching of Luther. That idea has in- 
creasingly approved itself to be of the very substance of Chris- 
tianity. 

It embodies a truth and a method. The truth is that of the 
peace of forgiveness, inward righteousness, Divine acceptance, 
through immediate access to God in Jesus Christ—justification 
by faith. The method is that of personal experience. The soul is 
actually to find this deliverance from sin and peace of conscience 
for itself. The true Christian, says Luther, can say: “I am a 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 103 


child of God through Christ, who is my justification.”” The medi- 
ation of the priest being therefore no longer needed, the soul’s 
enslavement to him is broken. His teaching and authority must 
be in accord with the primal sources of Christian knowledge— 
namely, the Holy Scriptures—which is the same thing as saying 
that as a priest he goes out of existence. And the gospel is 
known as the Word of God by that experience of justification and 
sonship to God which, through its instrumentality, arises in the 
heart of the believer. Thus, moreover, the freedom which it 
offers is not that of lawlessness nor of indifference, but the free- 
dom of the law of love. 

Now Luther, notwithstanding his strong and incisive thinking, 
was far, temperamentally, from being a philosopher. His tem- 
perament was passionate, not patiently reflective. He was ill able 
to endure suspense of judgment, even on the most difficult ques- 
tions. “I never work better,” he declares, “than when I am in- 
spired by anger.”’ Nevertheless the method by which he proved 
the great central truth of the Christian life was the same as that 
which was afterwards followed by the father of modern philos- 
ophy. For when Descartes started out as an original investi- 
gator, turning aside from all book learning, and making an hon- 
est effort to rid himself of prejudice and prepossession, he deter- 
mined to dismiss from his mind every idea about which there 
could be any doubt whatever. He even went further, and dis- 
missed mathematical ideas. One after another, everything which 
he had hitherto taken as true must go, until at last he was forced 


Note the significant difference in the grounds on which Luther and his 
master in theology, Augustine, were convinced of the truth of the gospel. 
“For my part,’ says Augustine, “I should not believe the gospel except as 
moved by the authority of the Church.” (“Against the Epistle of Mani- 
chzeus,” c. 5.) 

Along the same line of personal experience as Luther’s is the Westminster 
Confession, I. v.: “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the 
Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scriptures; . . . yet, 
notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and 
divine authority thereof is from the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with 
the Word in our hearts.” 


104 Christianity as Organised 


to admit: “My doing all this, my thinking, is a fact of which it 
is impossible to entertain a doubt; I am conscious of myself 
thinking.” It was the method of experience.’ 

Here certainly is agreement, manifest as well as real, between 
the way of the evangelic teacher and the way of the philosopher. 
And as a matter of fact, theologian and philosopher, Luther and 
Descartes, have wrought side by side in the modern world, wit- 
tingly or unwittingly, for the recognition and growth of person- 
ality.” 


5. PROTESTANT AUTHORITY IN TEACHING, IN GOVERNMENT. 


Nor can it be shown that the Protestant congregation, open to 
these influences, appreciating the testimony of experience, accord- 
ing due honor to the personality and individuality of its members, 
is, on the other hand, unappreciative of authority. 

Ts it a question of authority in teaching? Such are the limita- 
tions of life that the largest part of one’s knowledge, which gives 
direction to the largest part—shall we say?—of one’s actions, 
comes to him through the medium of authority. What do most 
men, learned or otherwise, know of geography or history or 
science, or the news of the day, through their own personal ob- 


*Nor is it easy to see how this experiential method can ever be set aside. 
“Of course many questions may be asked respecting the self which we are 
not able to answer; but the self itself, as the subject of the mental life and 
knowing and experiencing itself as living, and as one and the same through- 
out its changing experiences, is the surest item of knowledge we possess. 

For we must never forget that experience itself, with ourselves as its 
subjects, is the primary fact. . . . Nothing whatever can be affirmed 
which does not stand in articulate rational relation to the world of ex- 
perience.” (Bowne, “Personalism,” pp. 88, 89, 94.) Here begins all phil- 
osophic thinking in theology as elsewhere. 

*“Leibnitz and Kant, Hegel and Lotze, and many others in philosophy, 
even Goethe in the realm of purely human culture, are alike disciples of the 
Monk of Wittenberg. The principle of modern philosophy, that the world of 
event or thought or experience must be brought to a focus in the individual 
consciousness, is, after all, but the confirmation of Luther’s struggle in his 
cell at Erfurt, when we wrestled with Medieval discipline, and demonstrated 
its inadequacy as the method for training the human soul.” (Allen, “Chris- 
tian Institutions,” p. 431.) 


Individualism: Protestant Congregation 105 


servation? They must receive all this knowledge from those wha 
have been better able to learn it, or else they must be content with 
ignorance. So likewise with the knowledge of the Scriptures and 
theological truths. We must accept the interpretations of those 
who have the ability and the opportunity to acquire such know!- 
edge, as we have not. How could the religious education of a 
child, for example, be possible at all on any other principle? It 
may readily be granted that all authority must rest on truth; 
but it is equally clear that much truth must be received as rest- 
ing, first of all, on authority. Nor is it irrational to receive it 
thus. 

There is, however, evidently enough to the modern mind, an- 
other side to the question. Mere authority, it is clearly seen, 
cannot compel the belief of any proposition. Reason can, but 
reason only. A bludgeon is a sorry substitute for an argument. 
The most it can do is to command silence—to ‘“‘make a desert and 
call it peace.” A man, then, amenable in his thinking to reason 
only has a right to make researches of his own into history, sci- 
ence, any department of knowledge, and to form his independent 
opinion. It would, of course, be folly for him to attempt this 
without proper qualifications; but he may not be forbidden to do 
it at all. And religious knowledge is here no exception. Let the 
Christian judge, as he may be able, for example, whether an 
interpretation of Scripture be in accordance with the mind of 
Christ. Let him read for information and guidance what his 
judgment may approve, his conscience bearing witness “in the 
Holy Spirit,” with no Congregation of the Index or papal allo- 
cution to take the book out of his hand. This is the Protestant’s 
claim to the right of private judgment in religion. 

Or is it a question of authority in government? The Protes- 
tant congregation holds that government is an ordinance of God, 
and obedience to those who rule a Christian duty. Ina true sense, 
kings reign by divine right, just as do presidents of republics. 
The regularly constituted authorities of a church are to be obeyed. 
But the right of the private Christian to a part in the govern- 
ment of the Church is recognized, and the distinction between 


106 Christianity as Organized 


ecclesiastic authority and ecclesiastic tyranny, between organized 
Christianity and organized sacerdotalism, is not ignored. 

More specifically, a Protestant church will indeed set forth its 
creed, either unwritten or, as in almost every case, distinctly form- 
ulated. Both as a witnessing and a working body, it must have 
some such statement of the Christian faith to offer. Its appoint- 
ed teachers are to teach in essential accord with the truth as thus 
set forth. Its members are to make confession of Jesus Christ 
as the Divine Lord and Saviour, and not to inveigh against the 
faith and order of the church. But either teacher or private 
member may freely pass into the membership of another evan- 
gelical communion; and if any turn away utterly from the faith 
of the Church, the prayer that follows him is not an anathema. 
Nor in any case is exclusion from membership exclusion, either 
intentionally or really, either formally or actually, from the grace 
of salvation. The words of the great apostle-pastor are still the 
language of apostolic churches: “Not that we have lordship over 
your faith, but are helpers of your joy; for by faith ye stand.” 


It is, then, with the ceaseless interplay of individualism and 
social dependence, each tending to perfect the other, that a broth- 
erhood in Christ is organized for its world-wide service. The 
idea is well set forth in the paradoxical motto of that little classic 
of evangelic literature, Luther’s “The Freedom of a Christian 
man: “A Christian is a most free lord of all, and subject to 
none: a Christian is a ministering servant of all, and subject 
to every one.” But the same great word had already been given, 
as personal testimony, by the Apostle to the nations: “For though 
I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, 
that I might gain the more.’” 


Pen Gone 20) “1 Cor; 1x00} 


(107) 


The apostolic age is full of embodiments and principles of the most in- 
structive kind; but the responsibility of choosing the means was left to the 
Ecclesia itself, and to each ecclesia, guided by ancient precedent on the one 
hand and adaptation to present and future needs on the other.—F. J. A. Hort. 


They dwell with the King for his work. 
—Motto of Deaconess Home, Mildmay Park, London. 


Wouldst thou the holy hill ascend ? 
Wouldst see the Father’s face? 

To all his other children bend, 
And take the lowest place. 


Be like a cottage on a moor, 
A covert from the wind, 
With burning fire and open door, 
And welcome free and kind. 
—George Macdonald. 


If two angels came down from heaven to execute a divine command, and 
one was appointed to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a street in 
it, they would feel no inclination to change employments.—John Newton. 


The various theories of the Christian ministry are the key to the entire 
history of Christendom.—William Burt Pope. 


(108) 


I. 


OFFICERS AND PEOPLE: THE NEW TESTAMENT 
IDEA. 


IMAGINE a log schoolhouse in the mountains of West Virginia. 
There, some Sunday afternoon, a little girl drops a penny into 
the missionary box. The penny contribution is carried across 
lands and seas to the opposite side of our planet, and with hardly 
an appreciable loss of value helps to heal a disease or to save a 
soul in Korea. The same thing will be true of the next Sunday’s 
gift, and the next, and so on indefinitely. And if one should ask 
the name of that marvelous method by the aid of which so great 
a little thing is done, the answer would be, Organization. Not 
through magic, but through simple orderly codperation, the 
penny falls from the child’s hand into some outstretched hand in 
the antipodes. 

Nor need the organizers of a Christian church entertain a 
moment’s doubt that they are following a Divine method. For 
the further one goes, with observation and research, toward some 
sort of intelligent acquaintance with the world we live in, the 
more astounding is the evidence that everywhere the Maker of 
all things organizes. “The body of an ant,” we are told, “is 
many times more visibly intricate than a steam engine.” It 
comes as a genuine revelation, to find that the smallest bit of 
living matter which the microscope brings within the range of 
vision is in its simplicity full of complexities, and most beau- 
tifully organized. And when one follows the scientific imagina- 
tion in its incursions into the constitution of matter itself, with 
the ever-regulated and interrelated movements of its atoms and 
electrons, the very last word and the strongest conceivable word 
seems to be spoken for the ideals of system, order, unity, or- 
ganization in the making of the world. From the electron all 
the way upward to the man, it is the same Divine idea, endlessly 

(109) 


110 Christianity as Organized 


illustrated. Truer than he could have known are the words of 
an ancient sage in praise to the God of his fathers: “Thou hast 
ordered. all things according to measure and number and 
weight.’”* 

It is, then, not unreasonably a practical necessity that Chris- 
tianity, in the doing of its world-wide work, should be organized. 
But this means that it should have specialized organs, or officers, 
who, as servants of the one Lord Christ, shall “each in his office 
wait.” 


“Even dumb animals and wild herds,’ says Jerome to his 
young friend Rusticus, “follow leaders of their own. Bees have 
princes and cranes fly after one of their number in the shape of 
a Y.” Office, leadership, administration must be. It is a neces- 
sity which, variously foretokened on the lower planes of life, as- 
serts itself universally in the human sphere. All serious associa- 
tions are fain to organize. It is not a conspiracy of lawmakers 
and rulers that wills a nation into existence, but the people that 
will the existence of such officers. It is not the priests that make 
the religionists, but vice versa. Social life, like any other, will 
inevitably put forth organs for the attainment of its ends. Will 
the social life of Christianity appear as an exception? On the 
contrary, it will prove to be a most conspicuous example. 

It is our present attempt to trace, in the New Testament 
writings, the processes of office-making, or organizing, in the 
first Christian churches. True, there is nothing in either the 
Acts or the Epistles that approaches a detailed account of the or- 
ganizing of a Christian congregation. Yet sundry notices of 
such a process occur. In several instances the appointment of 
ministers, or officers, is narrated, official duties described, or the 
part of the people in government indicated. Fragmentary infor- 
mation, to be sure; but by careful grouping of passages a rea- 
sonably fair outline of the order of the rising Christian com- 
munities may be made to appear. We may hope at least that 


“The Book of Wisdom,” xi. 20. 


New Testament Idea III 


enough will be seen to illustrate the principles on which the or- 
ganization proceeded. 


I. THE BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM, AS SHOWN IN ACTS. 


Let us begin at Jerusalem. For it was here in the City of 
David, where the Lord had been crucified, and where, in obedi- 
ence to his command, the Messianic testimony of the chosen wit- 
nesses had begun to be offered, that the first Christian congre- 
gation was formed. We know that it began in much prayer, in 
the power of the Holy Spirit, in a new realization of the sense 
of brotherhood; and that for a short time there was little more 


than simple association. 


But we must now follow the course of events somewhat more 
closely. Immediately after the Ascension the Eleven returned 
from Olivet to “the upper chamber,” for expectant waiting till 
the promise of the Father should be fulfilled. There were others 
with them, about a hundred and twenty in all. Mary the mother 
of Jesus, certain other women, and Jesus’ brothers were of the 
number. “These all with one accord continued steadfastly in 
prayer.” They elected Matthias to fill the vacated place of the 
traitor-apostle (a hint of organization)—-seeking guidance in a 
petition that has been reported in the New Testament story.” 

They were still “all together in one place” when the Pente- 

costal blessing descended. Its symbol was the tongues of flame; 
its reality, the Spirit given as never before from the beginning of 
the world, and to abide with the believers in Jesus unto the end. 
- The Church of the New Covenant was now made possible. 
Many people, even thousands, at once accepted the evangel of 
Jesus the Christ. Becoming his followers, they continued in the 
Apostles’ teaching, and in the breaking of bread and the offering 
of prayers together. Their fellowship was real. Out of a com- 
mon treasury the wants of all were supplied.* They were at 
home together ;* amid threatening dangers their prayers were as 
the prayer of one man.* 


*Acts i. 14-26. Acts ii, *Acts iv, 23 (Tove idiovc). *Acts iv. 24-31. 


112 Christianity as Organized 


This indeed was not the whole story. That sin’ and infirmity” 
should have stained the lovely picture, and shown that not even 
in those conditions had Israel reached an ideal state, is no more 
than the persistent power of evil in human hearts might have 
foreshown. 

Thus, then, did the Church of God in the new age of Christ 
and the Spirit begin. Sharing in the life of the Living One, 
she arose and entered upon her awful yet glorious mission in a 
redeemed world of sin. 

The first distinct traces of organization are seen in the ac- 
knowledged authority of the Twelve—the people voluntarily lay- 
ing down their money “at the Apostles’ feet’* for distribution 
among the needy, and in the election of the Seven to relieve the 
Apostles of this administrative work.” About fourteen years 
later we find presbyters in the church in Jerusalem,” and James 
the brother of the Lord in a position of presidency or leadership.° 
But as to when or how these appointments were made, no infor- 
mation is available. 

James’s position of preéminence was unique. There is no other 
instance of a single presiding minister of a church in the apostolic 
age. How, then, may this instance be accounted for? The sup- 
position that the appointment of such an officer in Jerusalem was 
due to the fact of James’s kinship to our Lord, has been made 
with some show of probability. At any rate, ecclesiastic tradi- 
tion relates that, on the death of James, Symeon was chosen as 
his successor precisely on the ground of being of the lineage of 
Jesus’ kinspeople. Perhaps there was a hope that such a suc- 
cession might be kept up till the Lord’s coming again.’ 

It was probably about the year 46 that Paul and Barnabas ap- 


*Acts v. I-II. ?Acts vi. I. ®Acts iv. 34, 35. *Acts vi. 1-6. 

®Acts xi. 20, 30; xii. 25. ®Acts xii. I7; xv. 13; xxi. 18; Gal. ii. 12. 

™After James the Just had suffered martyrdom, as the Lord had also on 
the same account, Symeon, the son of the Lord’s uncle, Clopas, was ap- 
pointed the next bishop. All proposed him as second bishop because he 
was a cousin of the Lord.” (Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, Bk. IV., 
Xxii., 4.) 


| 


| 


New Testament Idea 113 


_ pointed presbyters in the recently gathered congregations of Asia 


Minor.” But this is the only note of organization in these 
churches. 


2. TESTIMONY OF THE EARLIER PAULINE EPISTLES. 


Turning now to the Pauline Epistles, it will be well to divide 


-them chronologically into the three following groups: those 


written before the author’s imprisonment in Rome—Thessa- 
lonians, Galatians, Corinthians, Romans (ca. 53-58) ; those writ- 
ten during this imprisonment—Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, 
Philippians (ca. 59-66) ; and those written subsequently—Timo- 
thy, Titus (ca. 64-68). 

Two most significant facts will meet us in this study. One is 
the different rate of development of church organization in dif- 
ferent localities. The other is the prominence of the charis- 
matic ministry, or ministry of gifts—that, namely, of Apostle, 
prophet, teacher, speaker with tongues, interpreter of tongues, 
discerner of spirits, worker of miracles, “helps,” “governments.” 
For this ministry of gifts was much more prominent than the 
appointed ministry, or ministry of government, which was that 
of presbyter (bishop) and deacon. 

In the Epistles to the Thessalonians there is no little exhorta- 
tion to the members of the Christian community that they en- 
courage and help one another,” but only one reference to officers: 
“Them that labor among you and are over you in the Lord.” 
And even here the term (poicrapévovs) is general, not teclinical. 
It may mean prophet-preachers and teachers, or it may mean 
officers corresponding more or less closely to those who were 
afterwards called presbyters—no one can tell. 

In Galatians no form of organization is mentioned. Such 
words of counsel are given as, “If a man be overtaken in any 
trespass, ye who are spiritual [you that have not given way to 
such trespasses, but have continued to “walk in the Spirit’’] re- 


1Acts xiv. 23. 21 Thess, iii, 12; iv. 9, 10, t8; v. 11, 14; 2 Thess. iii. 14, 15. 
*t Thess. v. 12. 


8 


114 Christianity as Organized 


store such a one in a spirit of meekness;’” and “Bear ye one an- 
other’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.’* But this law 
of Christ, which is love, seems to be the only law of the Christian 
congregation that occupied the Apostle’s mind. 

In 1 Corinthians we have the now familiar figure of the 
Church as a body, with its various organs “tempered together.” 
It is not to be thought of as a unit, “all one member”—the Apos- 
tle or the prophet or the pastor, for example, doing all that is 
done. It is a vital unity, ‘“many members,” “one body’—each 
member, even the “more feeble,” having an important part to 
perform for the general good. Hence there must be no false 
independence on the one hand—“I have no need of thee’”—and 
no self-disparagement on the other—“I am not of the body.” 

Then follows the fullest enumeration of officers, offices, func- 
tions, gifts (by which name shall they be called?) in the New 
Testament: ‘And God hath set some in the Church, first Apos- 
tles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts 
of healing, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues.’”* Also, 
in the fourteenth chapter such additional gifts, or offices, as the 
discerning of spirits and the interpreting of tongues are men- 
tioned.” 

In Romans the figure of the Church as a body with mutually 
dependent organs recurs; and the functions of prophecy, ministry 
(probably ministration to bodily needs), teaching, giving, ruling 
(the same word as in Thessalonians, mpotcrduevos) and others 
are designated; and, as in Corinthians, these are called gifts 
(xapicpara) from God. But no particular form of organization 
is either prescribed or suggested. Indeed, the salutation of the 
Epistle is not even addressed to a church, or congregation, at 
Rome, but simply to “all who are in Rome, beloved of God.’” 

In Ephesians there is an enumeration of Christian ministers, 
as follows: “And he gave some to be Apostles, and some proph- 


4Gal. vi. I. Avs: 13)26, 20) 
2Gal. vi. 2. ®Rom. xii. 4-8. 
31 Cor, xii, 28, *Rom, i. 7, 


New Testament Idea 115 


ets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers." In 
this passage, which should be compared with the parallel passage 
in Corinthians, the evangelist (or preacher to the unevangelized) 
finds a place between the prophet and the pastor, or teacher (the 
two latter names probably indicating the same office). But this 
is the only additional class of ministers mentioned. 

In Colossians we read of ministers, of a ministry “received in 
the Lord,” and of ‘“‘fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God;” 
but not of any more specific offices or officers of the Christian 
faith. 

Thus far, then, in the Pauline Epistles, no distinct reference 
is made to regularly elected and ordained officials of the Church. 
Only a non-official ministry is mentioned. There are spiritual 
gifts that qualify for callings which take form in services; but 
are these callings ministries, or offices, and these servants of the 
Church ministers, or officers? Only, it would seem, in a non- 
technical, non-official sense. 

It is also worthy of more than a passing notice that in this 
charismatic ministry the Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and 
teachers were of a higher order than the others. For theirs was 
not distinctly a ministry of miraculous signs or physical benefits 
or government—not “miracles,” “healings,” “helps,” “govern- 
ments,” “tongues.” It was a ministration of the living word of 
God; and accordingly these Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and 
teachers may be described by way of distinction as the prophetic 
ministry. 

Let us not go too fast. If necessary, we may be content to 
linger a few moments to make sure of getting a clear and re- 
memberable impression. The prophetic ministries—those of 
Apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher—were beyond all compari- 
son the greater. These men were the bearers of the word of 
salvation. They were the revealers of the mystery of grace, which 
had been hid from ages and generations, that God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto himself. “Go preach the gospel—ye 


“Git. AV, gL ly 


116 Christianity as Organized 


shall receive power—ye shall be witnesses unto me.” This was 
the Christ’s commission to these ministers of preaching and 
teaching. And their message has never ceased to be transmitted 
from tongue to tongue through the Christian ages. So that 
Christianity may aptly be described as the religion of “the word.” 

But there were lesser ministries—miracles, healings, helps, 
governments, tongues—good and wonderful in themselves and 
subsidiary to the greater ministries of preacher and teacher. And 
these subsidiary ministries, or gifts, might appear either in the 
ministrations of the Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers 
themselves, or they might appear in the ministrations of those 
upon whom the gifts of the prophetic ministry had not been be- 
stowed. They contributed either to the discipline and working 
efficiency of the Church, or to the supply of bodily needs; such as 
healing for the sick and food for the poor. They too, with the 
evangel itself, were signs of Christ’s coming kingdom. And un- 
der changing forms they too have not ceased to appear even to 
this good hour. 


3. TESTIMONY OF THE LATER PAULINE EPISTLES. 


But on taking up the Epistle to the Philippians, probably the 
last written of the letters of Paul’s first imprisonment, we meet 
with a new and noteworthy fact. A ministry which is recognized 
as such by appointment of the Apostles or of the congregation— 
namely, the ministry of government—emerges. For prominent 
mention is made of “bishops” and “‘deacons.’”* So with the Pas- 
toral Epistles, written later. In 1 Timothy bishops and dea- 
cons,’ and in Titus bishops,* occupy a prominent place. 

How shall we account for the fact of their having no place in 
the earlier Epistles? It is possible that they have a place there 
under the names of “‘they that are over you” (“he that ruleth’”), 
“helps,” and “governments.” But it seems very probable that 
in some of the churches addressed they did not exist. If, for 
example, there were presbyters in Corinth, it is difficult to be- 


*Phil. i. I. *ch. iii. *ch. i. 5-IT, 


New Testament Idea 117 


lieve that the Apostle would make no reference to them in con- 
nection with the question of discipline to which so much of his 
attention is given.” Yet it may be remembered per contra that, 
earlier than the date of the very earliest Epistle, there were pres- 
byters in the church at Jerusalem,” and also, through the appoint- 
ment of Paul and Barnabas themselves, in the churches of Asia 
Minor.* Then, too, as to the Church at Ephesus, we have the 
testimony of Acts that it had presbyters as its presiding officers 
at the time of the Apostle’s homeward voyage on his third mis- 
sionary circuit, which seems to have been four or five years 
prior to the writing of the Ephesian Epistle, in which, as we 
have seen, they are not mentioned.” 

This at least, let me now repeat, is strongly suggested: that 
the organization of the widely separated and differently circum- 
stanced churches was subject to no one fixed and invariable rule; 
and that it went on more rapidly in some cases than in others. 
It was more rapid, for example, in Asia Minor than in Corinth 
or Rome. And this also has been shown: that the ministry of 
gifts precedes both in time and in importance the ministry of 
government, and that in the mind of the Apostle the law of 
Christ rather than any governmental ordinance constitutes the 
Church. First that which is essential, then that which is prac- 
tically necessary; first the collective spiritual life, then its ever- 
changing economic form and manifestation. People would get 
on very poorly without houses to live in, which they must build 
for themselves; but without the perpetually entering and vital- 
izing air of heaven, which comes immediately from God, they 
could not live at all.” 


em Gors v. 6: ®Acts xiv. 23. 

#Acts xi. 29, 30; xii. 25. “Acts xx. 17. 

*It may also be worthy of attention that if the “South-Galatian” theory 
be true, there were presbyters in the churches of Galatia several years before 
the Epistle to these churches was written. (See Ramsay’s “Historic Com- 
mentary on Galatians.”) 

®As to the later books of the New Testament. In Hebrews xiii. 7, 17 
Christians are bidden to salute, remember, imitate, obey, and submit to 
their rulers (yotuevot, leaders, rulers), and in 1 Peter v. 1, James v. 14, 2 


118 Christianity as Organized 


One thing more. It appears that from the beginning of church 
organization there were two classes in the ministry of govern- 
ment (just as in the case of the ministry of gifts)—namely, 
overseers and helpers. The first were regular presiding officers; 
the others served regularly in some subordinate capacity. The 
distinction is foreshown in the charismatic “governments” 
(xvBepvdw, lit. “to steer,” “to pilot’) and “helps” of 1 Corin- 
thians, and is explicitly given in the appointed “bishops” and 
“deacons” of later Epistles. The two kinds of service would be 
called for by the needs of even an infant Christian society, and 
indeed are exemplified in human societies everywhere. 

If it be thought worth while, the whole Christian ministry 
taking form and expression in the apostolic age may be shown 
in some such scheme as the following: 


MINISTRY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHES. 


A. Ministry of Gifts. 
a. Prophetic Ministry (Apostles, prophets, etc.). 
b. Subsidiary Ministry (workers of miracles, etc.). 
B. Ministry of Government. 
a. Overseers, or bishops. 
b. Deacons, or helpers. 


4. THREE IDEAS OF THE RELATION OF OFFICERS AND PEOPLE. 


Looking now more attentively at the relation of officers and 
people, we shall find at its heart the three ideas of representa- 
tion, Divine appointment, and service. 

(1) It was a representative relation. In the Christian broth- 
erhood—indeed, in any local congregation—under the headship 
of Christ, inhered all governmental and ministerial powers, An 


John i., and 3 John i. presbyters are spoken of. None of these passages, 
however, gives any additional information on our present subject. In the 
second and third chapters of Revelation the Angel (¢ ayyeAoc) of each of 
seven churches in Asia Minor is addressed; but the word is too uncertain in 
meaning to be of service in a study of church officers, 


New Testament Idea 119 


officer was accepted or chosen by a church as the organ through 
which it undertook to exercise this or that power—its eye or 
voice or hand. This may be seen, as a matter of course, in the 
case of such special and temporaty appointees as Epaphroditus, 
Judas and Silas,* and others: “Epaphroditus, my brother and 
fellow-worker and fellow-soldier, and your messenger (éréaroXos) 
and minister (Aerovpyés) to my need;’” “our brethren, they are 
the messengers (dmécro\x) of the churches;’* whomsoever ye 
shall approve by letters, them will I send to carry your bounty 
unto Jerusalem.* 

But the same principle is illustrated in the permanent congre- 
gational officers—namely, bishops, or presbyters, and deacons. 
Presbyters were for discipline. But the power of discipline was 
invested by Divine authority in the congregation itself. We re- 
member that our Lord said concerning a brother’s offense: ‘Tell 
it unto the church, and if he refuse to hear the church also, let 
him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican;”* and that Paul 
wrote to “the Church of God which is at Corinth,” concerning 
one of its members who was committing immorality: “Do not 
ye judge them that are within? . . . Put away the wicked 
man from among yourselves.’ If, therefore, the supreme act 
of exclusion from membership was a function of the congrega- 
tion as a whole, all oversight and discipline may be so regarded, 
the greater including the less. And accordingly in the rule and 
caretaking of the presbyters, when they came to be appointed, 
the church was judging and caring for itself. 

A similar representative relation was that of the deacons. 
They were chosen, we may believe, for ministration to the poor. 
The appointment of the Seven in Jerusalem is perhaps a suffi- 
cient illustrative proof." It was the people that contributed the 
money or food, and the “seven men of good report, full of the 
Spirit and of wisdom,” that were intrusted, as an economic reg- 


*Acts xv. 22. ADs sve As! 82 Cor. viii. 23. 40) Con! xvi. 13) 
®Matt. xviii. 17. it (Cove iene keris "Acts vi. 1-6, 


120 Christianity as Organized 


ulation, with the office of making distribution of it to the poor 
widows.’ 

So likewise with the ministry of spiritual gifts. Here no less 
really than in the ministry of government the idea of representa- 
tion is embodied. For it must be borne in mind that it was 
Christ in the midst of the people, his mind and spirit in the 
hearts of them all, that made them a church. Whoever was 
willing to be ‘a man in Christ,” learning and doing the will of 
the heavenly Father, became a son of the light. Indeed, is not 
the same forever true? Through no official position, subordinate 
or supreme, historic or novel, apostolic or post-apostolic, but 
through personal love and obedience, comes the illumination of 
the Spirit of truth. ‘Who is the God of the Christians?” was 
tauntingly asked of Pothinus, an aged bishop and martyr of 
Gaul. ‘You will know,” was the reply, “when you are worthy.” 
So the spiritual life of these Christians of the apostolic age, like 
that of the Christians of any age, was a common life, and con- 
sequently their spiritual gifts a common endowment; all were 


Lowrie regards the prophetic teacher, in the exercise of his xdpioua, de- 
claring the will of God, as not only the teacher but at the same time the 
lawgiver and administrator of the Church: “The conduct of the Christian 
assembly cannot be determined by the assembly itself in the exercise of self- 
government, but only by the way of teaching, which declares what is the 
will of God for the Ecclesia. But this is a matter which pertains to the 
gifted teacher, who in virtue of his ydpicva authoritatively proclaims the word 
of the Lord and authoritatively deduces its consequences.” (“Church and 
Organization,” p. 233.) 

But is not this only half the truth? For not simply the prophetic teacher 
but the people also were under the leadership of the Holy Spirit; they also 
had received the “anointing” which abode in them and taught them “con- 
cerning all things” (1 John ii. 27); they must “discern” while the prophets 
spoke (1 Cor. xiv. 29), and must discriminate between the false and the 
true prophet (Rev. ii. 2). And the same is true of the “power of the keys,” 
the authority to admit and exclude church members. Was this power con- 
ferred upon an Apostle? Yes. Upon all the Apostles? Yes. Upon the 
whole Christian congregation? The affirmative answer must still be given. 
(Matt. xvi. 13-19; John xx. 19-23; Matt. xviii. 15-20.) 

So it was the illumined judgment of the people, after all, that was dominant 
in administration. 


New Testament Idea 121 


partakers of like precious faith, all had some knowledge, wisdom, 
power of utterance, power of ministration to the bodies and souls 
of men. 

But here and there was a man who possessed these gifts, one 
or more of them, in an extraordinary degree. That was his dis- 
tinguishing note. He must use them, therefore, openly ; he must 
preach, teach, heal, minister; but in doing so he was expressing 
not merely his own inner life, but that also which was common 
to the congregation; and doing not merely his own work, but 
that of the church. What was potential in them had become 
actual in him. The prophet, for example, spoke not from with- 
out but from within the congregation. He spoke simply as a 
gifted Christian, simply as one in whom the new life in Christ 
which to a greater or less extent was striving for expression 
in his fellow-worshipers, found an articulate voice. 

In the prayer meetings of our own day, to find an illustration 
close at hand, a person who offers prayer, either voluntarily or by 
invitation of the leader, is expected to express the devotional 
thought and feeling of those worshiping with him, as truly as 
his own. If his prayer become purely personal, the unfitness of it 
is immediately felt. For he is not merely to go in the way of 
devotional expression, but also to Jead. Similarly, in a church 
of the apostolic age, whoever would offer prayer or praise must 
do so not only in spirit but suitably to the hearers and the occa- 
sion, that the whole congregation might say the Amen at his 
giving of thanks." And that which was true of the spoken 
thanksgiving was also true, though less conspicuously, of the 
word of counsel, admonition, or exhortation. One spoke in the 
name of all. 

As to the administration of the sacraments. The authority to 
baptize was embraced in the authority to preach or teach, as 
seems to be shown not only in the Great Commission,” but also 
in individual instances.* Accordingly it shared in whatever rep- 
resentative character attached to the preaching or teaching. And 


ot) ©Or xiv. 15. *Matt. xxviii. 19. SActs viii. 12; ix. 17-19. 


122 Christianity as Organized 


as to the Lord’s Supper, it was the sacramental meal at which 
the presiding officer—if, indeed, there were a presiding officer— 
invoked the Divine blessing in the name of the whole assembly: 
“The cup which we bless; . . . the bread which we 
break.’ 

In the offices of Apostle and evangelist, however, the repre- 
sentative relation toward the congregation did not always ap- 
pear. Here, therefore, was an exception to the rule. It is true, 
when the disciples in Jerusalem laid down their money at the 
Apostles’ feet for distribution to the needy, the Apostles in dis- 
charging their trust were representing the people as truly as were 
the Seven who afterwards attended to this business.” But such 
was not the usual procedure. Characteristically Apostles and 
evangelists were beforehand with the people. They were orig- 
inators; they went everywhere, under the commission and com- 
mand of their Master, to win converts and establish churches 
where none had been before. How could they be representatives 
of a congregation that was just coming into existence through 
their testimony ? 

Yet this also is true: that when, through the word of an Apos- 
tle or an evangelist, a congregation had been gathered, the faith 
and experience of this itinerant preacher became its own faith 
and experience, which was uttered henceforth through him to 
others. His testimony was the more widely spoken testimony 
of that congregation. Accordingly the prophets and teachers of 
the church at Antioch did not hesitate to lay their hands upon 


#1) Conyx: (16: 

“The use of the plural ‘we,’ in reference both to the blessing of the cup 
and the breaking of the bread, clearly indicates that it was in virtue of his 
representing the whole company present, and not as individually possessed 
of some supernatural gift, that the one who presided at a Communion per- 
formed the act of consecration.” (Ellicott’s Commentary for English Read- 
ers, in loco.) Even so sturdy a sacerdotalist as Bishop Gore can go far 
enough in this direction to say: “We have no clear information [in the New 
Testament] as to who exactly can celebrate the eucharist or who can bap- 
tize.’ (“The Church and the Ministry,” p. 246.) 

2Acts iv. 34, 353 Vi. 2-4. 


New Testament Idea 123 


Barnabas and Saul and bid them go forth on a great missionary 
circuit ; and so these apostles of Christ, indorsed and sent by that 
Christian congregation, were in reality their accepted and ac- 
credited representatives.” 

Reverting now for a moment to the officers of rule and ad- 
ministration, the ministry of government, we may note that it 
might have been expected that they, being the representatives of 
the people, would have been elected by them. And so they were, 
‘in some instances certainly, in others probably. The Seven* and 
certain special messengers were thus elected.” As to presbyters, 
we are told that Paul and Barnabas appointed these officers in 
Asia Minor.* It does not follow, however, that the people had 
nothing to do with these appointments. For the silence of a his- 
torian is not always an expressive silence. In this case it may 
reasonably be regarded as inexpressive. And reasoning from the 
analogy of the cases just mentioned, of the manner of making 
elders in Israel,” and of the custom of the sub-apostolic age, it 
will appear not unlikely that these presbyters were appointed by 
the voice of the whole church over which they must preside.° 
In all cases, however, the strong probability is that, where an 
Apostle was present, his approval was practically necessary to 
such an appointment. Would he, on the one hand, indorse or 


*Acts xiii. 1-3. SA cts ve 3.05: *¥ Cor, xvi. 3. 

“Acts xiv. 23. *See page 211. 

*It has been maintained that a popular election is meant in this case, be- 
cause of the word used for “appointed” (yepotovéw, literally, “to stretch out 
the hand”). But while this word, in accordance with its literal meaning, 
was applied to an election by popular vote, it was also employed to denote 
a simple appointment or designation. (See Thayer, “Lexicon of the Greek 
New Testament,” in loco). In the first of these senses it occurs in 2 Corin- 
thians viii. 19; and in the second, in Peter’s address to the household of 
Cornelius (Acts x. 41). 

Dr. Ramsay finds, in Luke’s habitual exactness of language as a historian, 
an argument for the literal sense of the word in Acts xiv. 23 (“St. Paul the 
Traveler,” pp. 121, 122). On the other hand, it may very reasonably be held 
that, in these unorganized congregations in Lystra and the other Asian 
cities, the people would preferably leave the matter of organizing largely in 
the hands of the apostles through whom they had so recently been won to a 
profession of faith in Jesus. 


124 Christianity as Organized 


ordain a man whom he regarded as unfit to serve? or would the 
congregation, on the other, appoint a man whom their Apostle- 
pastor disapproved? Both Apostle and people, we may reason- 
ably believe, must approve—very much as in the case of the 
missionary or evangelist and his newly converted little congre- 
gation in the present day. 

(2) But all church officers were acknowledged as of Divine 
appointment. “God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, 
secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of 
healing, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues.”* “Helps” 
and “governments” as well as “gifts of healing” or “prophets” 
or even “Apostles,” let us observe, were “‘set in the Church” by 
the hand of God. ‘The flock in the which the Holy Spirit hath 
made you bishops,”* was Paul’s word to the Ephesian elders. 

How was this shown? By the very bestowment of the gracious 
gifts necessary to fit men, this or that one, for the office. These 
charisms, each determining its appropriate spiritual function, 
bore immediately from God himself the authority for their ex- 
ercise. “Having gifts differing according to the grace that was 
given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy; . . . or min- 
istry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, 
to his teaching; . . . he that ruleth with diligence.”* Hav- 
ing gifts—such is the Apostle’s exhortation—let us use them, 
and so prophesy, minister, teach, rule. 

Many things do not wait to be “authorized.” ‘The light of the 
sun asks no man’s permission to shine: enough that the Father 
of lights has kindled it. The eye must see, the tongue must 
speak, the hands must labor, because it is for this they were 
made. Similarly the spiritual gifts of God must be used at 
every Opportunity by the men and women‘ to whom, as stewards 


*t Cor. xii. 28. 7Acts xx. 28. Rom. xii. 6, 7. 

*Restrictions, indeed, were placed upon the speaking of women in the 
congregation (1 Cor. xiv. 35; 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12). Such restrictions were 
needful in that age; and in spirit, though not in letter, they are applicable 
to all ages. Cf. similar restrictions upon the disuse of the veil (1 Cor. xi. 
4-15). It is not to be inferred, however, that women were forbidden to use 


New Testament Idea 125 


of his manifold grace, they are intrusted. The attitude of the 
apostolic churches toward them was that of recognition, not of 
_ original authorization. 

Was the government, then, democratic? It may be so de- 
scribed, but very inadequately. In the true and fuller sense, it 
was charismatic, and hence theocratic. Did the officers represent 
the people? As we have seen, yes; but more immediately and 
truly they represented the immanent Christ, the Spirit of truth 
in the congregation. Was it the prophetic teacher’s word that 
was looked to for guidance and law? It was indeed the word 
of God through the prophetic teacher. 

Hence it is the gift and its exercise rather than the office or 
the officer, upon which apostolic emphasis is laid. In the great 
passage just now quoted the second time from 1 Corinthians, 
officers and gifts are codrdinated: side by side with “Apostles,” 
“prophets,” “teachers,” are “miracles” (not miracle-workers), 
“sifts of healing’ (not healers), “helps’’ (not helpers), “gov- 
ernments’ (not governors), “divers kinds of tongues” (not 
speakers with tongues). Why this coordination of officers and 
gifts? The simplest explanation is that the gift of “miracles” 
and those that follow in this enumeration had not given rise, like 
the gifts of apostleship, prophecy, and teaching, to anything like 
distinct offices or officers. Because of the irregularity and in- 
frequency of their exercise by any one person, or because they 


the prophetic gift under all circumstances in the apostolic churches. In fact, 
it is plainly shown that they did use it (Acts ii. 17; xxi. 8, 9; I Cor. xi. 5, 
13) 

+“The Church was not to develop her ministry from below, but to receive 
it from above by apostolic authorization.” (Gore, “The Church and the 
Ministry,” p. 248.) Would it not be a truer confession of faith that the 
Church was “to receive her ministry from above by” Divine vocation, and 
to have wisdom to recognize it when given? 

“Tt seems hard for the advocate of apostolic succession to understand that 
‘from above’ is from the Spirit of God, and that the Spirit may use any 
humble instrument to effect his call. A John may baptize a Jesus; an Ana- 
nias may lay hands on a Paul, and unknown prophets ordain the first 
Christian missionary apostle, at Antioch.” (Dulles, “The True Church,” p, 
191.) 


126 Christianity as Organized 


were not exercised in the congregation but privately, or perhaps 
because of their subordinate spiritual importance, they remained 
as “gifts”? only, and were spoken of accordingly. But however 
this may have been, in all cases—that of prophesying as well as 
that of healing, that of teaching as well as that of speaking with 
tongues—it is the gift rather than the office or the officer that 
is significant. Hence the immediately following exhortation: 
“Desire earnestly the greater gifts.”” Not the greater offices or 
positions, but the qualifications for them. To receive and exercise 
the charisms of the Holy Spirit—that was all. 

No, not all; there was something more, and incomparably bet- 
ter. The qualifying gifts were themselves to be qualified by the 
heart of love. Here is the “still more excellent way,” the in- 
nermost secret of spiritual power. Apart from this, even the 
tongues of angels would be discordant and the martyr’s death a 
vanity. Gifts which, exercised for self-gratification, excite con- 
fusion and wrangling in the house of God, when thrilled through 
with the spirit of love make for unity and strength. Gifts may 
scatter and destroy—the brethren at Corinth, falling apart into 
factions, were gifted; “love buildeth up.’” 

It is in the twelfth and fourteenth chapters of Paul’s First 
Epistle to these Christian brethren that instructions are given for 
the regulation of the use of gifts. And the intermediate chap- 
ter, the thirteenth—what of that? That, as we all know, is in 
praise of love. The order of topics is significant—a discourse on 
gifts with the hymn of love singing itself forth in the midst of 
it. Which would seem to say that at the very heart of all gifts 
is that which is incalculably more than any gift, the root and 
crown of the Church’s life, the all-fulfilling grace of Christlike 
love. 

(3) But the combination of gifts and love in the spiritual life 
will result, as already suggested, in service. Is this, then, one 
element in the relationship of officers and people in the Christian 
congregation? It is the chief. Let it be lost, and that relation- 


“t (Cor, Xi, 31. 71 Cor. xiii, 


New Testament Idea 127 


ship will be utterly emptied of meaning. Office is ministry. Oth- 
erwise it has no reason or right to be. As well suppose the “gov- 


_ernor” of an engine to be put in position, as a regulator, for its 


own sake and not for the sake of the whole body of machinery 
and its output, as to suppose a governor of people to be elected 
for his own sake. 

The principle is not confined to organized Christianity. It is 
universally applicable. 

In point of fact—and the fact is worthy of more than this 
parenthetic remark—the same thing is true also of “representa- 
tion” and of “Divine appointment.” Stripped of what is local 
and temporary and of what is distinctively Christian, the govern- 
ment of the earliest Christian churches illustrates the essential 
principles of all government, civil or ecclesiastical. In proportion 
as any society approximates an ideal perfection, the relation of 
officers to people will be that of representation, Divine appoint- 
ment, and service. 

When, therefore, the civil office-holder acts from any motive 
inconsistent with the welfare of the people, he is doing no less 
culpable a deed than to pervert the ends of a divine institution. 
Is he one of those, for example, whom Jesus describes when he 
says, “Ye know that they who are accounted [or supposed] to 
rule over the Gentiles, lord it over them’’—tyrannize, instead of 
ruling? It is a case of unfaithfulness to the God of men and of 
nations. In Church and State alike, the true ruler is father and 
friend, the servant of all. It is the very law of Christ that is 
personalized in the prophet’s vision of kingship: “And a man 
shall be as an hiding place from the wind and a covert from the 
tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land.’” For this law of love makes no 
exception of the seats of official power. It includes the world 
from hovel to throne. 

But subtle as the action of any physical poison is the process 
by which even the eager servant of the Church may be corrupted 


say SSCKIL 2 


128 Christianity as Organized 


into the self-centered office-holder. He may have begun as a 
very Stephanas, setting himself, with his household, to minister 
to others, 

More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise, 


and for that very reason raised by his brethren to some service 
of rulership.* But now the joy of self-sacrificing service is de- 
parting from his life, and he seems to know it not. He is yield- 
ing to the charms of prominence and position in the house of 
God itself. And the church might say, like a neglected friend, 
“He no longer cares for me;’ the meaning of which complaint 
is: “He no longer loves me.”’ To love is to “care for.” 

“As the light of the morning when the sun riseth” is the New 
Testament teaching of this law of unselfish service in office and 
rulership in the Church. One great word of the Divine Founder 
will suffice for illustration. He was on his way to the Cross. 
Yet the Twelve, who accompanied him, had been disputing 
among themselves by the way as to “who should be the greatest.” 
They seem indeed to have felt somewhat the shame of it; for 
when asked concerning the question in dispute, they had nothing 
to say. Then the Master, who knew all the meaning of their 
silence, sat down as a teacher, called them to him, and said, “If 
any man would be first, he shall be last of all, and minister of 
all;’’ and taking a little child in his arms, he taught them: “'Who- 
soever shall receive one of such little children in my name, re- - 
ceiveth me.”” What cares the little child for honors and author- 
ity and worldly “greatness?” The Master’s own heart was the 
child-heart, and his hand the hand of a “minister.” He would 
have it be so, likewise, with all those who are called by his name, 
even unto the end of the world. In the kingdom of heaven great- 
ness is childlikeness and service. 


The true process of office-making, then, is unmistakable in 
the New Testament. It is a divine order. First the spiritual 


*T) Gor,-xvi.-15,, 0; *Mark ix, 33-37, 


New Testament Idea 124 


gift qualifying for some particular form of service—teaching, 
evangelizing, healing, ruling; together with the gift, the grace 
of Christian love, enkindling the heart for service; then the ex- 
ercise of the imparted gift in actual ministration; and then the 
recognition, formal or informal, of such service, by the congre- 
gation, and its regular continuance under their sanction. 

And in this process of office-making appear the three formative 
ideas with which our attention has just now been engaged: those 
of representation, Divine appointment, and the service of love. 


2, 


II. 


OFFICERS AND PEOPLE: LOSS AND RECOVERY 
OF THE IDEA. 


WE have seen that in the apostolic age church officers as such 
had no exceptional powers. What they did was not some act of 
administration from outside which no others could share, and 
without which no others could come into covenant with Christ. 
It was a ministration which the congregation itself performed 
through them as its representatives. The Christian congregation 
itself had authority to preach, to teach, to baptize, to administer 
the Lord’s Supper, to elect its own officers, to exercise discipline 
as God might give ability. So far as these offices were com- 
mitted into the hands of chosen or accepted individuals, it was 
a matter of order and efficiency, not of distinction in spiritual 
power. There was no clerical caste. 

In a word, officers were ministers Divinely appointed by the 
gifts bestowed upon them, chosen or accepted for service, and in 
all their functions representative of the congregation. 

Now from this apostolic starting point the history might be 
called, in the language of familiar metaphor, the development 
of a planted seed just breaking the crust of the soil, into the 
many-branched and majestic tree. But it might also be de- 
scribed by a very different figure. The fall of the snow “from 
white sky to black earth, that,” it has been said, “is the his- 
tory of an organized faith’—inevitable contamination attend- 
ing the truth of Christ in the hands of its organizers. Perhaps 
we shall find the two metaphors equally true and equally one- 


sided. 

To what extent, then, has the original, or New Testament, 
idea been followed by the subsequent generations of Christians? 
That is the question before us now. 


(130) 


asthe, 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 131 


1. IDEA OBSERVED IN SUB-APOSTOLIC AGE. 


The idea was followed without misgiving or deviation, so far 
as can be gathered from the scanty information available, in 
the generation immediately succeeding the apostolic age. The 
relation of officers and people was the same as before. All spir- 
itual functions still belonged to the local congregation. The 
Christian people were still permitted to preach or teach,’ to ad- 
minister baptism and the Lord’s Supper,” to elect and dismiss 
officers,’ to expel from membership in the Church.* And some 


*Let him that teaches, though he be one of the laity, yet if he be skillful in 
the word and grave in his manners, teach; for “they shall all be taught of 
the Lord.” (Apost. Const., VIII. 32.) 

Of like import is the case of Origen, who, as a layman, preached and 
expounded the Scriptures in the public congregation in Czsarea, at the re- 
quest of the bishops of Palestine, and was rebuked by the bishop of Alex- 
andria, not for the preaching and teaching but for doing it when a bishop 
was present. (Eusebius, H. E., vi. 16-18.) 

“Even laymen have the right to baptize; for what is equally received 
can be equally given. Unless bishops or priests or deacons be on the spot, 
other disciples are called—t. e., to the work.’ (Tertullian on Baptism, c. 17.) 

“In many places we find it the practice [for the bishop to baptize] more 
by way of honoring the episcopate than by any compulsory jaw. . . . If 
necessity so be, we know that even laymen may, and frequently do, bap- 
tize.” (Jerome, “Against the Luciferians,” c. 9.) 

“Let that be deemed a proper eucharist which is [administered] either by 
the bishop or by one to whom he has intrusted it.’ (Ignatius to the Smyr- 
nzans, c. 8.) The tone of this, together with other passages in the letters 
of Ignatius, indicates that the presidency of a church officer at the Lord’s 
Supper was not the law or universal custom. 

*“Now appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord.” 
(Didache, c. 15.) 

“Those therefore who were appointed by them [the Apostles] or by 
other men of repute, with the consent of the whole church, . . . these 
men we consider to have been unjustly thrust out of their ministrations. 
For it will be no light sin for us, if we thrust out those who have offered 
the gifts of the bishop’s office unblamably.” (Clement, “Epis. to Corin- 
thians,” c. 44. Cf. Polycarp to Philippians, c. 11.) 

“Who, then, among you is noble-minded? who compassionate? who full 
of love? Let him declare: ‘If on my account sedition and disagreement and 
schisms have arisen, I will depart, I will go away whithersoever ye desire, 
and I will do what the majority command; only let the flock of Christ live 


132 Christianity as Organized 


of these things were done by them, as the references just given 
show, through successive generations or even centuries.’ 


2. PERVERSION OF THE MINISTRY INTO A HIERARCHY. 


But in the swift course of the years a radical and far-reaching 
change was wrought. The ministry of gifts gradually declining, 
the ministry of government meanwhile elevated itself more and 
more above the people. Not only, indeed, did it rise above them: 
it finally separated itself from them by a sharply defined caste 
distinction. 

What were the causes of this fateful separation between offi- 
cial and non-official members of the Christian brotherhood? 

(1) One cause was the increasing tendency to lean upon con- 
stituted authority. The churches, growing larger in membership, 
were at the same time becoming poorer apparently in spiritual — 
gifts. Meanwhile the need of a strong government for the main- 
tenance of unity in the midst of heresies and schisms was more 
keenly felt. Therefore let the chosen leaders, on whom rested 
the chief responsibility, speak the word of counsel or judgment 
or command, and let the people hearken and obey. Such was 
the measure of self-protection and orderly procedure that came 
to be adopted. 

As early, indeed, as the close of the first century we find 
Clement of Rome drawing an analogy between the relation of 
priest to people under the Mosaic economy, and the relation of 
officers to people in the Christian Church.” And only a few 
years later Ignatius of Antioch urges absolute submission to the 
bishop, or pastor, as to Christ himself.* 

(2) This undue officializing movement was accelerated by the 
form in which the Lord’s Supper came to be celebrated. It is 


>? 


on terms of peace with the presbyters set over it. (Clement to Corin- 
thians, c. 54.) 
1Here the claim and custom of modern congregationalists are almost en- 
tirely scriptural and primitive. (Cf. Heermance, “Democracy in the Church,” 
pp. 141, 142.) 
To the Corinthians, c. 40. *Ephesians, 6; Trallians, 2; Magnesians, 3. 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 133 


true that Jesus’ memorial feast should have had just the oppo- 
site effect; and so it might, had the manner of its observance 
remained the same as in the beginning. For at that time all 
the communicants sat together and partook of the sacramental 
meal at a common table. But when the bishop, with his council 
of elders, had been appointed in each congregation, and when, 
also, the number of communicants had become too large to admit 
of their sitting at the table together, the bishop sat there as presi- 


_ dent, and on-either side of him the elders, while the people came 


to the table, a few at a time—the deacons waiting upon them— 
and received the bread and wine standing.’ 

There were the bishop and the elders seated, like the ruler and 
the elders in the synagogue ;° or, as the Church of that age con- 
ceived it, like the Lord and his Apostles at the Last Supper. 
Here were the people standing apart, or merely approaching their 
office-bearers to receive the holy symbols at their hands. It was 
an object-lesson of official separateness rather than of congre- 
gational unity and fraternity. Taking part in it, Sunday after 
Sunday, would exert its proper (yet most improper) influence 
upon the participant’s mind. It would familiarize him with the 
idea of occupying the lower place.” 

(3) Another cause was financial. The officers were supported, 
at least in part, by the people. Not as a matter of professional 
fees or of hirelings’ wages, but of brotherly codperation and 


| practical necessity, they were made recipients of contributions of 
_ money or provisions. “Tend the flock of God,” says the Apostle 
))Peter to presbyters, . . . “nor yet for filthy lucre, but of 
a ready mind’”*—an injunction which implies that the presbyters 


*Const. Apos., VIII., ii., 12, 13. *Neh. viii. 4; Matt. xxiii. 6. 
*“Tt can hardly be doubted that the separation which was here involved 


_ between the congregation on the one hand, and the bishop, presbyters, and 


deacons on the other, was a potent factor in developing the idea of the 


_ clerus as a separate class in the community. It must at once have accen- 


tuated the notion of rank.” (Lowrie, “The Church and Its Organization,” 
p. 287.) 

47 Pet. v. 2. Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 14; Gal. vi. 6; 1 Tim. v. 17, 18 (in which 
passage unless the meaning of the word honor (tu@) be “price,” or “hon- 


134 Christianity as Organized 


received pay from the congregation, and shows at the same time 
that their services must not be rendered on that account. The 
Didache also teaches that “the true prophet” should not be a 
money-seeker, but that when settled in a church he is morally en- 
titled, as is “the true teacher” likewise, to a support.’ 

The prevalent custom in the post-apostolic churches seems to 
have been to maintain a common fund out of which the ministry 
and the poor alike received allowances. The ministry received 
theirs, however, only in case of actual need; and hence not as 
salary or wages, but rather as a contribution to the needy.” The 
ministerial office did not require its incumbents to give up their 
ordinary occupation—as mechanics, tradesmen, or farmers, for 
example’—and so, it may be supposed, did not, for the most part, 
seriously interfere with self-support. When it did thus inter- 
fere, however, or when for any cause the rulers and leaders of 
the Church were in need of the necessaries of life, these were 


orarium,” the logical connection of the two verses does not appear); 2 Tim. 
ii. 4-7. 

In this last passage, after reminding Timothy, the temporary chief pastor 
in Ephesus, that “the husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake 
of the fruits,’ the apostle adds the significant injunction and assurance: 
“Consider what I say; for the Lord shall give thee understanding in all 
things.” Does Paul mean that spiritual discernment is necessary to dis- 
criminate between ordinary work with its wages and the due response of a 
Christian congregation to the spiritual service of its ministers? 

*Didache, 13. It will be noted that nothing is said here concerning the 
support of bishops and deacons—perhaps because they were not held in such 
high esteem, perhaps because, unlike the prophets and teachers, they were 
able to support themselves. (Cf. Eusebius, H. E. VI., xliii., 11.) 

*The first recorded instance of a church teacher or officer receiving a 
stipulated salary is that of Natalius, who, in the beginning of the third cen- 
tury, was paid the sum of one hundred and fifty denarii (about twenty-five 
dollars) a month; and this was while serving as bishop in a heretical sect. 
(See Eusebius, H. E., V., xxviii., 10.) 

“Even the learned clergy shall gain their living by a trade. (Can. 51.) 
The clergy shall gain their food and clothing by a trade or by agriculture, 
without prejudice to their office.” (Can. 52.) So decreed the (supposed) 
Fourth Council of Carthage (398). 

There were later councils, however, that forbade the clergy to follow 
secular pursuits. 


| 
| 


| 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 135 


distributed to them." It might be added that doubtless both the 
character and the position of such men would give special weight 
to their claim as compared with that of other needy church mem- 
bers.” 

But even though there were the “ready mind“ in shepherding 
the flock, and even though the pay were small and irregular, and 
even though it were given only in necessitous cases, yet the bare 
fact of pecuniary maintenance would have some effect to set the 
ministry apart as a distinct class in the Church. 

True, such a fact need not of itself prove to be a potent sep- 
arative influence. But when, under the laws of the Emperor 
Constantine, church officers received an allowance from the state, 
and through this, together with other causes, became financially 
independent and even wealthy, their wealth did tend, as wealth 
will always tend, to create a class distinction. 

(4) Then, too, in the official acceptance of Christianity as the 
religion of the Empire, there lurked another and a more effectual 
cause of this official class distinction. For this great act of the 
Emperor was followed by the bestowal of various honors and 
privileges upon the clergy. Before the lapse of many years they 
were exempted from what was then the “almost intolerable bur- 
den” of holding civil offices, from the payment of certain taxes, 
and in the case of petty crimes from the jurisdiction of the civil 


It was on this ground that the founder of Methodism based the claim of 
ministerial support: “For I look upon all this revenue [contributed by the 
members of the United Society], be it what it may, as sacred to God and 
the poor; out of which, if I want anything, I am relieved, even as another 
poor man. So were originally all ecclesiastical revenues, as every man of 
learning knows, and the bishops and priests used them only as such. If any 
use them otherwise now, God help them.” (Tyerman, “Life of Wesley,” Vol. 
ip. 5SI. 

?An illustration may be found in a passage of the Apost. Const. con- 
cerning the distribution of food at church feasts. The instructions are that 
the pastor shall have the first-fruits; then, “as much as is given to every 
one of the elder women, let double so much be given to the deacon in 
honor of Christ,” a double portion also to presbyters as to those who “labor 
continually about the word and doctrine,” “and if there be a reader, let him 
receive a single portion, in honor of the prophets.” (Bk. II., 28.) 


136 Christianity as Organised 


courts. As to the bishops, they became civil magistrates, and 
were so highly esteemed for their office’ sake that the emperor 
himself did not disdain to kiss their hand ;’ as indeed is done in 
the case of priests by the king of Roumania and even by the Czar 
of Russia in the present day. 

(5) Still another cause was the extraordinary growth of 
monasticism (say, from the fourth century onward for 800 
years). The operation of this cause may easily be traced. Let 
it be borne in mind that originally there were no two standards 
of personal piety in the Church, one for the ministry and the 
other for the people. It is indeed a lofty standard which the 
New Testament sets before the presbyter and the deacon, but not 
one hair’s-breadth higher than that which it sets before all Chris- 
tians.* To be a Christian was to be in principle and spirit a saint. 
Whether officer or private member of the congregation, it was 
all the same. “A minister,” it has been said even in our own en- 
lightened day, “‘ought to be different from others—eat differently, 
drink differently, talk and act differently.” Different how and 
why? A Christian, whether with or without a specific office in 
the Church, must strive and must help his brethren to strive after 
the realization of a perfect manhood in Jesus Christ—this was 
the teaching under which the apostolic churches were gathered 
and governed. Experience, spirit, morals, manners were the 
same for all. 

But afterwards, as we have seen in the study of Individual- 
ism, when the Empire itself was coming, unregenerate, into the 
Church, and to be a Christian meant practically hardly more than 
to have been baptized, it came to pass that anxious or earnest 
souls tended, through reaction from the prevailing worldliness 
and formality, toward ascetic observances and a life of seclusion. 
Nor was it an unpopular movement. On the contrary, the monk 
was lauded as the typical Christian. Formerly the Church itself 


1Smith and Cheatham’s Dictionary, Art. “Immunities of the Clergy.” 
27) Dimensions 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 137 


was regarded as opening the door to the higher life; now, the 
monastery. 

But it was felt to be an unseemly thing that the Christian min- 
ister should live a less stringent life than the monk, who, as such, 
was only a layman. Hence it came to be expected of the min- 
istry that they should follow a higher rule of conduct than the 
laity. They, like the monks, must practice asceticism. They 
must deny themselves amusements that were innocent enough in 
others. Celibacy was declared to be their only proper state of 
life.” Thus, representing the idea of the more perfect religious 
character, as it was conceived in that age, ministers were elevated 
in popular estimation still higher above the people’s level.” 

(6) But all these influences combined must pale into insig- 
nificance before the great determining cause that enthroned the 
minister of Christ in awful isolation beyond the reach of his 
brethren. That cause was the prevalence of sacerdotalism. As 
early as the beginning of the third century the sacerdotal con- 
ception appears in Christian literature; and some years later it 
was more distinctly enunciated, together with its twin idea, the 
apostolic succession, by Cyprian of Carthage. The presbyterate 
was transformed into a priesthood. The priest and he only could 
impart sacramental grace and exercise dominion in the Church 


of God. 


*More than one provincial council in the fifth century legislated in its 
favor; but it was never universally enforced as a requirement. At the Coun- 
cil of Nice a number of bishops were inclined to declare clerical celibacy to 
be the law of the Church. But through the dissuasion of an exemplary and 
influential bishop, Paphnutius, they consented to desist from enacting such a 
canon. See Ecclesiastical Histories of Socrates (I., 11) and Sozomen (L., 
23). Nor did any other of the Seven Councils that were accounted ecu- 
menical pass a law on the subject. 

*“They had a separate civil status, they had separate emoluments, they 
were subject to special rules of life. The shepherd bishop driving his cattle 
to their rude pasturage among the Cyprian hills, the merchant bishop of 
North Africa, the physician presbyter of Rome were vanished types whose 
living examples could be found no more.” (Hatch, “Organization of Early 
Christian Churches,” p. 163.) 

*For the intimate relationship of sacerdotalism and apostolic succession, 
see Gore, “The Church and the Ministry,” pp. 70, 71. 


138 Christianity as Organized 
3. DIFFERENTIATION OF THE TERMS “CLERGY” AND “LAITY.” 


It may be worth while to notice here the differentiation of the 
terms clergy and laity in ecclesiastical usage. Originally the 
name clergy (6 «Ajpos) meant something—for example, a peb- 
ble, or a bit of wood—that was used in casting lots. Then, 
through association of ideas, it came to mean that which is ob- 
tained by casting lots, and through a further association of ideas, 
that which is obtained in some other way; as, for example, by 
inheritance.” Then, again, the term was applied to people, when 
they were thought of metaphorically as the inheritance of the 
one who had the care of them. It is in this sense that the 
apostle Peter exhorts the presbyters not to rule arrogantly over 
the “clergy :” “Tend the flock of God, : 2 /Janeither ae onme- 
ing it over the charge allotted (rv xAypov) you.”* And now 
we need particularly to note that it is in this same sense that 
the term is applied to all God’s people when they are called meta- 
phorically his own inheritance,” as in the words of Paul to the 
Ephesians, describing Christians generally as a “clergy,” or herit- 
age, in Christ, “in whom also we were made a heritage (¢«AnpoOr- 
pev).””” For the evident meaning here is that Christians are God’s 
own inheritance. In like manner we find Ignatius of Antioch 
speaking of the Lord’s people as a “clergy,” Christ’s inheritance, 
among whom he would fain be numbered: “That I may be found 
in the lot («Ajpe) of the Christians of Ephesus.”® ‘Ere long, 
however, the term came to be applied distinctively to the minis- 
try, probably as those who are the chief or representative people 
of God." 

Then, as these clergy became priests, the name gathered unto 
itself the sacerdotal meaning, which is totally different from its 
original sense. 


*Matt. xxvii. 35. ?Acts i. 17; viii. 21; xxvi. 18. ®t Pet. v. 3. 

“It is an idea of the Old as well as of the New Covenant. (Deut. iv. 20; 
ix. 29; Joel iii. 2.) 

°Ephesians i. II. °To the Ephesians, 11. 

"Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon, s. v. 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 139 


On the other hand, as the laity (or people, 6 Ados) lost their 
former position in the Church and were brought into such dis- 
paraging contrast with the clergy, their name meant less than 
before. They were no longer people so much as minors, chil- 
dren. They were sheep in a perverted sense of the beautiful 
Scripture metaphor. ‘Sheep,’ said Iago Lainez, general of 
the Jesuits, addressing the Council of Trent, “are animals desti- 
tute of reason, and in consequence they can have no part in the 
government of the Church.” 

Thus clergy and laity became purely ecclesiastic terms, devoid 
of all evangelic meaning. 

During this whole time (say, 200-1200, a thousand years) 
the people were being gradually dispossessed of their priv- 
ileges and rights. Or, to say the same thing from a different 
point of view, they were gradually prevented from doing their 
proper duty and service as members of the Christian brother- 
hood. They were forbidden to preach or to teach in the presence 
of a bishop, or in the presence of the clergy except at a bishop’s 
command, and later forbidden to preach or teach at all." They 
Were not permitted to approach the altar in partaking of the 
Lord’s Supper, and in the Eastern Church not permitted even to 
witness the consecration of the elements. The administration of 
discipline also was wholly removed out of their hands.” 

But how about their part in electing church officers? Even 


*Tt does not befit a layman to dispute or teach publicly, thus claiming for 
himself authority to teach; but he should yield to the order appointed by the 
Lord, and open his ears to those who have the grace to teach.” (Council in 
Trullo (692), Canon 64.) 

“That cases of discipline were judged by the whole community, assem- 
bled under the presidency of its officers, so late as the time of Cyprian, is 
clear from the letter of the Roman Church to him (St. Cyprian Epist. 30, 
31). . . . This is in harmony with the general analogy of the Christian 
communities to the contemporary secular communities, in which all matters 
of importance were decided ‘conventu pleno. . . . In course of time the 
church officers came to act alone in matters of discipline, and, still later, 
their power so to act was regarded as an inalienable attribute of the priest- 
hood.” (Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” p. 120, foot- 
note. ) 


140 Christianity as Organized 


Leo the Great, conscientious and thoroughgoing autocrat as he 
was, declared that “he who is to preside over all should be 
elected by all.” But this permission too was withdrawn, though 
in some cases as late as the eleventh century laymen continued 
to cast their votes in the election of bishops.* We find them vot- 
ing at times, it is true, in a most irregular and even violent man- 
ner. For instance, when Ambrose, the Roman governor at Milan 
and only an unbaptized layman in the Church, while trying to 
quell a tumult which had arisen in the congregation over the 
choice of a bishop, was himself chosen bishop by a loud im- 
promptu acclamation; or when Augustine, while quietly sitting 
as a visitor in the church at Hippo, in the midst of a sermon by 
Valerius the pastor, was eagerly called upon by the congregation, 
then and there, to become assistant pastor, and in the face of his 
protestations and tears was constrained to accept the office. Now 
such demonstrations, however well they may have resulted in 
these and some other historic instances, were not favorable to the 
idea of popular elections. They afforded the officiary something 
of a reason, and apparently much more of a pretext, for taking 
the suffrage out of the people’s hands. But these vehement pop- 
ular demonstrations can only be regarded as rare exceptions. 
Usually the people seem to have voted regularly, together with 
the clergy, and probably with a wisdom not unworthy of co- 
operation with theirs. 

But this right was afterwards universally denied them. The 
priesthood had become the active Church; the laity, passive re- 
cipients. 


1There was opposition to it before Leo’s day: “The election of those who 
are to be appointed to the priesthood is not to be committed to the multi- 
tude.” (Council of Laodicea (347-381), Canon XIII.) 

2“The election of bishops by the people continued to be the practice till 
the time of Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine, who were all so elected.” 
(Schaff, “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” p. 73 n.) 

Indeed the people of Rome took part with the clergy in the election of 
the pope until the year 1059, when, under a decree of Nicholas II., this right 
of suffrage was restricted to the cardinals, with whom it has ever since 
rested. 


ital 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 141 


This idea of organized Christianity as a clergy-church has been 
completed and perpetuated in world-wide enterprise by the 
Church of Rome. Would a father, asks the Roman theologian, 
in framing or executing laws for the management of his house- 
hold, take the vote of his little children? His divinely given re- 
sponsibility and his superior wisdom would render such a course 
preposterous. There is power and charm in infantine voices, but 
not if they undertake to speak in tones of counsel or authority. 
Similarly the Roman hierarchs, with the Bishop of Rome at their 
head, claim to be divinely charged with the guidance and govern- 
ment of the Church while time endures, and to be qualified for 
their office by a spiritual illumination to which the laity can lay 
no claim. To admit others, therefore, whatever their intellectual 
capacities, to any share in such functions would be gross unfaith- 
fulness and unwisdom. “Note, venerable brethren,” says the 
present Pope, in his Encyclical Pascendi, of September 8, 1907, 
concerning Modernism, “the appearance already of that most 
pernicious doctrine which would make the laity a factor of prog- 
ress in the Church.” 

Let us not lay the whole blame, however, upon the leaders. 
The people themselves had much to do, at least indirectly, with 
the fixing of their own position. Did they not probably have 
more to do with it than did the leaders themselves? Doubtless 
they were but too willing, in the majority of instances, to receive 
their religion at second-hand—and are so now. It was through 
a lack of personality ; and it showed the absence of a thoroughly 
inwrought Christian faith, which would have created the true 
personal manhood. Some one has finely remarked that “when 
Diogenes said that he had never seen a man, he uncovered the 
whole opportunity of secular barbarism, social exclusiveness, po- 
litical injustice, and religious quackery.” 


4. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE IN THE History OF ORDINATION. 


This radical change in the way of regarding the ministry in 
its relation to the people is well illustrated in the history of the 


| rite of ordination. As in the first century, so in the second, this 


142 Christianity as Organized 


rite was simply the induction into office—usually, though not, it 
seems, invariably, by the laying on of hands’-—of a man who was 
already supposed to have received the necessary spiritual gift.’ 
He might be elected by the people. He might be chosen for the 
congregation by one or more apostolic men. He might be called 
by the concurrent voice of the people and their apostolic leaders. 
But, in any case, it is not a matter of doubt that the human ap- 
pointment was made in the faith of a previous appointment at 
the hand of the Lord. As in the ancient time “the Lord said 
unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom 
is the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him,’ so in the apostolic 
age the ordination was given because of “the spirit” in the or- 
dinand, and not that he might receive the Spirit through the 
ordination. ‘Having gifts differing according to the grace that 
was given to us, whether prophecy, . . . or ministry, 

he that ruleth (6 mpoiorduevos) with diligence.’” 

Similarly in later times the congregation was bidden to pray, 
after having elected their bishop, or pastor: “O God, strengthen 
him whom Thou hast prepared for us.” 

But as the sacerdotal and prelatic idea gathered strength, de- 
fining itself meanwhile more distinctly from the third century 
onward, it developed the sensuous fancy that spiritual fitness for 
office was given in the act of ordination itself. The Holy Spirit 
was communicated to the applicant for the priesthood through 


1Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” pp. 133, 134. To take 
a modern instance, the British Wesleyan Conference ordained elders, for 
more than a generation (1793-1836), by simple election without laying on 
of hands. 

?Acts vi. 1-6; Titus i. 5-9. As to the case of Timothy, 2 Tim. i. 6, 7, see 
p. 284 ff. 

®Num. xxvii. 18. 

‘Rom, xii. 6-8. 

Does it need to be added that the word “ordain,” as used in the Author- 
ized Version of the New Testament (ec. g., in Mark iii. 14; John xv. 16; 
Acts xiv. 23), is the translation of Greek words ( Tovéw, riOnut, xetporovéa) 
which mean simply to make, to constitute, to appoint, implying nothing as to 
the imposition of hands? 

5Canons of Alexandria (wrongly ascribed to Hippolytus), IT. 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 143 


the laying on of a bishop’s hands. So “holy orders” became a 
sacrament, superstitiously believed to convey a spiritual power 
of which the unordained are wholly destitute.” 


5. SOME CHANGE OF OrGANIC ForM DEMANDED. 


Now it is a long way, more than a thousand years, that we 
have traveled from the time of the Master and his first disciples. 
But the distance in time is not greater than the change of form 
in organization and ordinances that has taken place in his re- 
ligion. 

Some change of form, indeed, was not only inevitable but 
highly desirable. It would be demanded by a religion that should 
remain forever the same in its principles and spirit—demanded 
by that very inward steadfastness. A man whose immutable 
principle of conduct is to do good to others will learn to “be- 
come all things to all men.” He may be old this morning and 
young this evening; an Englishman to-day and a German to- 
morrow. So with any institution or body of men. A living 
church, therefore, holding fast its essential truth through all in- 
tellectual moods or historic discoveries, ever bearing witness of 
the Eternal, will be sensitive in method and administration to the 
conditions of the time. or the conditions of the time are the 

_ Church’s providential opportunity. 
But is this the case before us? By no fair construction of the 


“Tf any one says that by sacred ordination the Holy Spirit is not given, 
| and that vainly therefore do the bishops say, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, 
| or that a character is not imprinted by the ordination, or that he who 
| has once been a priest can again become a layman, let him be anathema.” 
(Council of Trent, on Sacrament of Order, Canon IV.) 

The word “ordination,” “ordain,” “orders” is not of Scripture origin. An 
ordo was a rank or class of Roman citizens. The term was applied, for 

example, to a council to which the administration of a city or a colony was 
committed. To “ordain” (ordinare) was to appoint to a civil office. The 
_ early Latin fathers used the word as a part of their ecclesiastic vocabulary, 
{ and, there is every reason to believe, in a sense corresponding to its political 

meaning—that, namely, of simple appointment to office. To ascribe to it in 
their writings the sacramental idea of the impartation of special grace would 
| be an anachronism. 


> 6 


144 Christianity as Organized 


facts or interpretation of apostolic teaching and example can it 
be so regarded. It is not a mere success »n of adaptations that 
here appears, as of a plant which, changing with a changing en- 
vironment, while the law of its life remains absolutely the same, 
is able to adapt itself to a new habitat. Nor is it a simple 
genuine growth, such as the lapse of time may be expected to 
record in any resourceful society, whose later stages must of 
necessity present a very different appearance from its beginnings 
—a case of root and blossom, of promise and fulfillment.’ 
Neither is it a mere hardening of aspiration and divine com- 
munion into ecclesiasticism—the formation of a gritty shell for 
the protection of the kernel of truth within. None of these.. 
Not a series of adaptations, but compromise and deterioration; 
not growth, but excrescence; not self-protection from threaten- 
ing evils without, but shriveling and decay within. Instead of 
cooperative brotherhood, a hierarchy; instead of the law of lib- 
erty, either paternal or egoistic despotism. 

Yet we are told that all this, or at least a great part of it, 
may be regarded as not only inevitable but reasonable and right. 
“Try as you may’—there are those who thus speak—‘“you will 
never get the oak back into the acorn. Neither coaxing nor 
shrewd management nor violence will be of any avail. Nature 
forbids. And so also is the Church—the Church of our own 
time as compared with the more primitive organization of its 
earliest years.” Shall we not listen sympathetically to such an 
argument? It is indeed a true parable, and all that seems to 
be needed is the true interpretation thereof. Suppose, then, that — 
the tree which started from the acorn should prove to be but 
a scrub oak or a bulky but diseased and disfigured oak, or for 
some reason unworthy to be called an oak at all. “An enemy 
hath done this.” 

The departing Son of God gave assurance to the congregation © 


“For what every being is in its perfect state, that certainly is the nature 
of that being. . . . Its own final cause and its end must be the perfection 
of anything.” (Aristotle, “Politics,” Bk. I., c. 2.) 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 145 


of his disciples that they might have the perpetual leadership of 
the Holy Spirit. “That He may be with you forever, even the 
Spirit of truth.” And now if it be asked how the well-nigh uni- 
versal Christian congregation could have gone so far astray in 
anti-Christian forms and ideas, the one sufficient negative answer 
must be: By not knowing the leadership of that “Holy Spirit of 
promise.” For as it was through Pentecost that the Church of 
Christ was called into actual existence, so it is only through the 
perpetual illumination of the Spirit that its purity can be pre- 
served and its heritage of power realized. 

The first Christian communities lived and walked in the Spirit. 
As flawless men and women? Alas, no; and yet predominantly as 
genuine Christian disciples. But when the doors of the house of 
God were thrown wide open, and all men were brought by bap- 
tism into its membership, and kept there as partakers of its sac- 
raments and subjects of its authority to the end of life, it came 
to be composed chiefly of those who did not live under the tuition 
of the Spirit. Therefore, they did not want to think and act for 
themselves as God’s coworkers in the furtherance of his king- 
dom. They did not choose to put on the whole armor of God 
and “fight the good fight of faith.” They were ready to engage 
substitutes—as if in this war there could be a substitute. 

In the civil community such a spirit is known as a relaxation 
of that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty; in the 
Church it made an opportunity, eagerly embraced by ambition 
or a bedwarfing paternalism, for the priest, the prelate, and the 
pope. ‘The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule 
by their means; and my people love to have it so.’” 

Let it be remembered also that to follow Christ is a very high 
ideal. It is easy enough to be religious—the formalist or rit- 
ualist in any age has set himself no excessively strenuous task. 
But to be a Christian is to live by faith, in the spirit of love, and 
in communion with the Father in heaven. It is to deny the mas- 


*Jeremiah v. 30, 31. 


19 


146 Christiamty as Organised 


tership of self. It is to have the spiritual mind. And what more 
could life at its highest demand ? 

An American savage, brought into touch with civilization, de- 
clared: “It costs too much to be a white man.’’ Here was a 
typical instance. The savage did not want to live like a dog. 
He would be a man. He must have a wigwam, a fire, some 
cooking utensils, some rude clothing, some weapons, a patch of 
maize. But as to the civilized life, that seemed far too high for 
his endeavors. It was a weariness. Its realization cost too much 
in labor of hand and brain. He would be let alone, therefore, in 
dull satisfaction with his low estate. Similarly men in all social 
and political conditions would be religious. They would not live 
wholly for the visible and the sensuous. They would pay some 
homage to the supreme Being. They would practice certain 
rites of worship, and indulge the hope, each according to his 
kind, of a happy immortality. But when the religion of the 
Spirit is set before them, its cost seems singularly heavy and its 
attainment too lofty an ideal. Why keep striving after the tran- 
scendent and divine? Thus the temptation is very powerful to 
drop down from even the contemplation of a truly Christian life 
to the plane of mere religious observances. 

Behold the opportunity of the prophet, if he should appear, to 
stir the inmost deeps of the spirit and bring the man into con- 
scious contact with the living God. But here is also the oppor- 
tunity of the priest, who is very likely to appear, standing between 
God and the people and delivering to them such an external and 
second-hand religion as may satisfy the unspiritual mind. 


In what may be called the historic churches the prelatic and 
sacerdotal conception of the Christian ministry is still either dom- 
inant or strongly influential. And in the East little or nothing 
has been added to it since the fourth century. Not so, however, 
in the West. For here prelacy has reached its culmination in 
papacy, and the claim of the priesthood in authoritative abso- 
lution and the unequivocally defined mock miracle of transub- 
stantiation, 


Loss and Recovery of Idea 147 


In Protestantism, which under its infelicitous negative name 
represents the truer Catholicism, the original idea has been re- 
covered. The Christian congregation is recognized as possess- 
ing within itself, through the grace and headship of Christ, all 
spiritual and ecclesiastic powers. It is the Church of God—in 
that local congregation. It may preach and teach, administer 
sacraments, adopt rules and regulations for its own government, 
elect and dismiss members. When it does these things through 
its officers, it is as a matter of order and not of inherent dif- 
ference in spiritual or ecclesiastic power between the officer and 
the people. The gift and calling of the minister of the gospel is 
of the Divine Spirit, and the badge of his office is not lordship, 
but service. The universal priesthood of believers in the Lord 
Jesus Christ leaves no standing ground for offering salvation 
through penance and the mechanical operation of sacraments. 


The priest, therefore, is worse than unneeded and unknown—as 
in the New Testament. 


Tt: 
SERVICE; THE DEACON—HIS EARLIER OFFICE. 


THERE are some closely related fundamental truths which it 
may not be amiss, before going further, to repeat, even at the 
risk of irksome iteration, as plainly as possible. 

1. A church, in the New Testament sense, is a Christian con- 
gregation, whether organized or not. True, in all ordinary cir- 
cumstances it will express itself ere long in some kind of or- 
ganization, as a matter of well-being. Duty and love will united- 
ly constrain it to do so. But it may exist as a church, in the 
form of a simple congregation, before ever it possesses an officer 
or a polity of any kind. 

2. Any church, however small, has the divine right to do, ac- 
cording to the wisdom given it, what any other church, or any 
particular number of associated churches, or the churches of 
the whole world collectively, have the right to do. That is to 
say, it may expound the Scriptures, preach the gospel, administer 
baptism and the Lord’s Supper, ordain officers, admit and expel 
members, undertake Christian enterprises, as it may deem most 
conducive to the advancement of the kingdom of God. 

If, for example, a few pagans in some far-off isle of the sea 
should somehow find a book or hear a sermon by an itinerant 
evangelist which proved to be the means of their conversion and ~ 
their instruction in Christian doctrine, they might gather them- 
selves together and do all these things without violating any law 
of Christ. They not only might but ought to do such things. 
To deny them this power—till, let us say, they were brought into 
some sort of tactual or other connection with a historic body of 
Christians—would be unscriptural and unjust. 

(3) Any local church may, if it will, decide to do any or all of | 
these things through a self-perpetuating body—such as a Quar- 
terly Conference—or through the codperation and approval of 
some outside ecclesiastical authority—such as a Presbytery 01 | 


(148) 


| 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 149 


General Convention or Synod or Bishop. For this acting through 
representatives is also a part of the liberty with which Christ 
has made his people free; and to forbid the use of this liberty 
would be to impose a gratuitous yoke of bondage. 

(4) The officers of a church do not differ, as to the possession 
of spiritual powers, from the people. No form of ordination 
makes any difference in this respect. When, for example, or- 
dained ministers teach or preach or administer sacraments or 
preside in a business meeting or pronounce a benediction, we 
have no reason to believe that any spiritual influence attends their 
ministrations that might not attend the like ministrations at the 
hands of unordained ministers—as in the apostolic churches. 

(5) When a church’s organization is spoken of, it is not simply 
what are commonly known as ministerial offices—such as that 
of teaching elders or of bishops—or the offices of lay deacons 
and elders, that are meant. But all lay organization is included 
—the offices of a Sunday school, of a missionary society, of a 
young people’s society, of trustees, of a visiting committee, of a 
sexton, or whatever others there may be. Let no church member 
imagine, in a spirit of self-depreciation, that because he is not 
some other he is not a part of the organization. “If the foot shall 
say, ‘Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body,’ is it not 
therefore of the body?” 

So, then, a complete treatise on organized Christianity would 
take account of all these forms of official service—those of min- 
isters and people alike. For ministers and people, all together, 
constitute a church; all alike have their ministries to fulfill; all 
alike are, or ought to be, organized—after the analogy of an 
army or an industrial undertaking—for Christian service. On 
the part of the minister habitual activity, on the part of the peo- 
ple habitual passivity, is a sacerdotal and not a New Testament 


idea or practice. 


{ Tf now it should be asked why in the present volume lay or- 


ganization is only touched incidentally—such topics as Sunday 


Schools, Missionary Societies, and the like receiving no specific 


150 Christianity as Organized 


discussion—the answer would ke that the offices selected for 
treatment seem sufficient to illustrate the ideas of church organi- 
zation, and lack of space forbids further enlargement.” 

Or if it should be asked why, under the broad title of “Chris- 
tianity as Organized,” only the organization of churches should 
be treated, and not that of such societies auxiliary to the Church, 
as the Young Men’s Christian Association or the Salvation 
Army, a similar answer might be given. 


1. THE Most CHARACTERISTIC OFFICE OF EARLY CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 


The most characteristic office in the early Church was the diac- 
onate. It would have been easy to find, both in civil govern- 
ments and in voluntary societies, offices corresponding to that of 
presbyter and that of bishop in Christian congregations. But it 
would not have been equally easy to find an office corresponding 
to that of deacon. Accordingly it may be noted that, while the 
names presbyter and bishop were titles already in use as tech- 
nical terms, either among Jews or Greeks, the name deacon was 
not a title already thus in use. On the contrary, it was a com- 
mon term, which was taken up by the Church and used tech- 
nically. | 

The explanation is not far to seek. Christianity is embodied in 
fellow-workers. The Church is for service. It is her mission in 
the world to do good of the highest kind and in the largest 
measure. Of no other institution can this be asserted with the © 
same breadth and depth of meaning. Standing alone as the in-— 
stitutional representative of the kingdom of heaven on earth, — 
quite out of comparison with all other beneficent societies, is the 
Congregation of Jesus the Christ. Therefore, as we have seen, ~ 
among the formative official ideas of the Church is that of serv-— 


ice. But in this one particular office the idea so predominates ~ 
-_ —:,'0—_ a 

1Those topics are treated in “The Idea of the Church,” an introductory 
volume to the present treatise, under such titles as “The Fellowship of Work” — 


and “The Constitutional Forward Movement.” 
5 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 181 


that it has given the name to the office itseli—both creating and 
naming the diaconate. 

Whence came the spirit and ideal of service in the Christian 
community, no one can fail to discover. At the very beginning 
it was made supremely real in the person of the ministering 
Saviour. Was it not one of his own vivid and unequivocal 
words, “I am in the midst of you as he that serveth (6 daxover) ?” 
The Master was a minister, the Lord of the soul the servant of 
all. So far, then, as Christians became Christly, theirs too must 
be a lifelong ministry of loving service. This was shown in the 
ministry of the word. Like their Lord, they offered to men that 
bread of truth by which alone the soul can live. It was a “min- 
istration (Saxovia) of righteousness,” “of the Spirit,” “of a 
new covenant.” But this was not all; Jesus’s ministry was also 
to the body. He was healer to the diseased, bread-giver to the 
hungry. See the Ruler with the heart of a servant, on the 
evening before he shall lay down his life on the cross, uttering 
that discourse which is “one long unfolding of the inner nature 
of the Church,” and now, fully conscious that he came from God 
and is going to God, bending, towel-girded, over the feet of men 
who are capable of forsaking or denying him. It was both a real 
and a symbolic service. It was the royal law personalized in its 
matchless example, the King of men.” 

Nor did Jesus’s ministry to physical needs, with its always ac- 
companying ministration of wisdom and truth, cease with the 
Resurrection. It was the Risen One who asked on the lake shore 
in Galilee, “Children, have ye aught to eat?” and had a fire of 
coals there and the morning meal ready for his hungry and won- 
der-stricken disciples; and it was he himself, the Man of Galilee 
now declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrec- 
tion from the dead, that ‘cometh and taketh bread, and giveth 
them, and the fish likewise.” Utterly shattered lay the dream of 
a warrior Christ. Jesus was Christ, and the weapons of his war- 
fare were spiritual truth, sympathy, self-sacrifice, service. 


‘John xiii. 14, 15. *John xxi. 9-13. 


182 Christianity as Organized 


2. BENEFICENCE IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 


Jesus’ like-minded disciples, therefore, would find it in their 
hearts to attend upon the bodily wants of their fellows; “the min- 
istry of tables” would take its place, a subordinate but indis- 
pensable place, in connection with “the ministry of the word.” 
Under the very glories of Pentecost we find the disciples making 
provision for the poor, disposing of possessions and goods and 
distributing the proceeds to all, “according as any man had 
need.’ The first sin that mars the fair record of Christian life 
in the city where Jesus, betrayed by the avaricious treasurer of 
his own little company of Apostles, had given himself up to 
crucifixion, was untruthfulness about a certain contribution of 
money. The first church officers elected were a board of finance.* 
The first mention of presbyters in the New Testament history is 
in connection with their receiving from Antioch contributions to 
be distributed among the destitute Christians in Judzea—an in- 
teresting and suggestive coincidence, if nothing more.* 

All this was in Jerusalem. And indeed the need of beneficence 
there was very great. Because for one thing such was the at- 
tractiveness of the Holy City to the Jews dispersed throughout 
the world that they kept returning to it and making it their 
home, either temporarily or permanently, beyond its power to 
yield a support. The surrounding country was infertile, and the 
resources of the city itself by no means affluent. Hence “the poor 
saints in Jerusalem” of whom we read in the New Testament. 
It afforded the Apostle of the Gentiles a peculiar joy to gather 
contributions in Europe, and convey them by his own hand to 
his needy fellow-Israelites in the city of their fathers.* 

But Jerusalem was not the only city where the conditions of 
life tended strongly toward increase of poverty. Equally ad- 
verse conditions obtained far and wide in the Roman Empire. 
Not as a fretful and threadbare complaint, but in sheer reality, 


*Acts ii. 45. ?Acts y. I-II. ®Acts vi. 1-6. 
“Acts xi. 27-30. ®Acts xxiv. 17; I Cor. xvi. I-4; 2 Cor. ix, 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 153 


it might have been said that the times were hard. In many in- 
stances the government, both imperial and municipal, had to 
_make provision for the helpless and suffering poor. In the city 
of Rome a regular and long-continued distribution of bread be- 
came necessary. Private beneficence also was loudly called for, 
and it did not always disregard the call. Charitable associations 
were formed; charitable bequests were made.’ 

Here, too, there was a cause of poverty due to the profession 
of Christianity itseli—namely, the giving up of what were now 
condemned as sinful means of gaining a livelihood. Such, for 
example, were employments connected with the worship of idols. 
These and all immoral occupations the followers of Christ must 
forego. 

Accordingly as Christian churches were organized here and 
there, chiefly among the poor, one of the very first demands 
upon them was to feed the hungry. Hospitality became a con- 
spicuous virtue.” 

The table of the Lord was the table of a common meal, a 
love feast, at which the necessities of those who had little or 
nothing were to be supplied.” Nor did the practice of systematic 
beneficence in Christ’s name pass away with the purer and more 
primitive years of Christianity. “It is a scandal,” said the Em- 


+“The world never needed charity and compassion as it did in the cen- 
turies just following Christ. . . . Knavish taxgatherers, peculating off- 
cials, and local ‘rings’ plundered the money which was wrung from the half- 
starved farmers. . . . Wast masses of proletaires were gathered in the 
cities, especially in the imperial capital; and poverty, orphanage, abandon- 
ment of children, with widespread pauperism, prevailed as they have scarcely 
ever been known in the history of the world.” (Brace, Gesta Christi, pp. 
96, 97. Cf. Hatch, “Organization of the Early Christian Churches,” pp. 32, 
33.) 

?Rom. xii. 13; xvi. 23; I Tim. iii. 2; Titus i. 8; 1 Pet. iv. 9. 

The earliest of the Fathers, Clement of Rome, couples faith and hos- 
pitality, and again faith and godliness, as conditions of the Divine favor: 
“On account of his [Abraham’s] faith and hospitality, a son was given him 
in his old age. . . . On account of his hospitality and godliness, Lot was 
saved out of Sodom.” (“To the Corinthians,” Io, 11.) 

®t Cor. xi. 20-22. 


154 Christianity as Organized 


peror Julian, “that the Galileans should support the destitute, 
not only of their religion, but of ours.” 

As to the care of widowhood, it was undertaken as a distinct 
concern of the Church. This, it will be remembered, gave rise 
to that first board of finance, the Seven in Jerusalem. Later 
there was instituted in the city of Ephesus a roll of widows 
which likewise illustrated the kindness, and the common sense 
also, of early Christianity. To be entered upon this roll was to 
be entitled to the systematic almsgiving of the church. But the 
beneficiaries must be “widows indeed ;’ which is to say, depend- 
ently poor, at least sixty years of age, and without children, ~ 
grandchildren, or other near relatives under natural obligation — 
to provide for their support and able to do so. They must also 
have had but one husband (évés év8pds yuvy), Nor was this all. 
These Christian widows were to be Christians indeed. Their 
previous life must have shown them to have been hospitable in 
their homes to visiting Christians and strangers, and well re- 
ported of as diligent in all good works.* 

Now it is not to be supposed, we may be sure, that only such 
as these would be kindly ministered to by the church. But no 
others were to be admitted into this special class of beneficiaries.” 
The door of entrance into it must be opened and shut, not 
thrown down. For corporate charity, unguarded from abuse, 
may easily become promotive of individual idleness or stingi- 
ness—a perversion against which church funds, like any other, 


1; Tim. v. 3-16. 

“Tt brings before our eyes not merely that far-off primitive Christian 
church of Ephesus, but also the presc:.: work of a Scottish country kirk- 
session. When the bread-winner dies careful inquiries are to be made, 
whether the bereaved widow and orphans have any means of support, or 
can receive any aid from their relations, who are to be stirred up to do their 
duty to those who are left helpless. If the children or grandchildren are 
able to work, they are commanded to support her who has been left a 
widow; but if such help fails, and if the widow is too old to earn her own 
living and has always borne a good character, then she is placed on the poor 
roll of the congregation and supported by the community.” (Lindsay, 
“Church and Ministry,” p. 148.) 


ee 


Service: Deacon—Early Ofiice iets 


need protection. Nor is there conflict, but, contrariwise, many 
points of friendly contact, between love and wisdom, kindness 
and criticism, Christianity and common sense. The wise and 
great-hearted Apostle who bade one Christian congregation see 
that they abounded in the grace of liberal ministration toward 
their needy brethren’ reminded another: “For even when we 
were with you, this we commanded you, If any will not work, 
neither let him eat.’” 


3. THE CHurcH Not DISTINCTIVELY FOR THE RELIEF OF Poor. 


Furthermore it is not to be supposed that the Church was 
then, or is ever to be, distinctively a society for the relief of the 
poor. Many unsympathetic observers in the present day would 
seem to regard it as such; for the bitter charges of uselessness 
which they make against the Church are based almost wholly 
upon its alleged lack of sympathy with the wage-earner. But 
such a conception is so far below the truth as to be a serious 
misconception. They would make Christianity, in its organic 
form, what the people would at one time have made the Christ 
—a bread-king.* But Christ would be followed as Saviour and 
Lord, not as dispenser of loaves. His Church, likewise, is the 
society for saving men, whatever their outward circumstances, 
and lifting them up into that eternal life which he came to give. 
It is to awaken and satisfy the sense of their spiritual needs. It 
is to win them unto the worship of God and the habitual doing 
of his will. The changed heart, with the consequent changed 
life, is its work in the world. Would any one say that ministra- 
tion to the physical wants of the poor was the supreme or dis- 
tinctive object of the life of Jesus? Neither is it the supreme or 


ED Con ville 7. 

°2 Thess. iii. 10. 

Cf. the earliest Christian manual: “If he [the stranger] will take up his 
abode with you and is an artisan, let him work and so eat; but if he has no 
trade, provide employment for him, that no idler live with you as a Chris- 
tian. But if he will not act according to this, he is a Christ-trafficker. Be- 
ware of such.” (Didache, c. 12.) 

®John vi. 13-15. 


156 Christianity as Organized 


distinctive object of the Church, which is his body, wherewith 
he would continue his ministry to men. 

Outside critics inquire freely as to the use of the Church, the 
particular ages of the world to which it seems adapted, and its 
promise of perpetuity. Very well; let us ask the same questions 
of all other great and enduring institutions—of such, for in- 
stance, as the civil government and the school. These institu- 
tions rest, each and all, upon some imperative human need. Men 
are so made as to require protection for their persons and prop- 
erty, and concerted action for the promotion of various material 
interests. Hence the fact of civil government. They are so made 
as to require knowledge and instruction. Hence the fact of the 
school. But just as truly are they so made as to require moral 
and religious guidance, teaching, reconstruction. Under every 
sky men are sinners needing release from their sins, they are 
spirits needing spiritual development. Hence the fact of the 
Church. 

Looking at the Church, then, from the purely human point of 
view, we find it resting on a universal need of humanity. Here, 
indeed, is not a bodily, nor a civil, nor an intellectual, but a spir- 
itual need—more deeply human than any other. And it is this 
truth that must give direction to all inquiries as to the Church’s 
fidelity or unfaithfulness, its success or failure. Were it a ques- 
tion of an almshouse or a hospital, the demand for the insti- 
tution would be measured by the necessities of our flesh and 
blood. But when the question is that of organized Christianity, 
another standard of measurement is called for. 

Suppose the brightest dream of socialism realized. Poverty 
is annihilated. The overdriven and underpaid laborer is no 
more to be seen. The best medical and surgical skill is freely 
at the service of everybody. Music, art, literature open their 
doors wide to whoever may choose to enter. Neither wars nor 
rumors of wars are any longer heard—the once honored military 
school is remembered with a blush of shame. Men have learned 
at last to form a universal brotherhood, and by substituting col- 
lective for individual economic endeavor, to provide abundant 


a a 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 157 


wealth, together with abundant rest and leisure, for all. The 
development of the hitherto untouched riches of field and mine, 
earth and air, sunlight, ocean, electricity, ether, and their appli- 
cation to the supply of human needs goes on to its far-away 
brilliant conclusion. Science and industrial art have wrought 
their last beneficent miracle. Farewell to drudgery. The 
world’s physical work is done not by muscle, whether human or 
sub-human, but by the forces of nature, with man as director— 
immeasurable cosmic force under the guidance of intelligent 
will. 

What then? Would men be satisfied? would their sins de- 
part with their poverty? would they care for no other life and 
no other good? On the contrary, as strongly as ever since the 
beginning of the world the spirit would cry out for the living 
God. As deeply and as universally as ever the Church’s mes- 
sage of eternal life in Christ, and all her means of spiritual cul- 
ture, would be needed. For “it is written’ where no man’s 
hand, one’s own or another, can erase it: “Man shall not live 
by bread alone.” 

We should only fall into exaggeration, therefore, to assert, 
with a noble Christian teacher of the present day, that “it might 
almost be said that the Christian Church was organized for the 
care of the poor.”* Nevertheless care for the poor, or, to speak 
somewhat more broadly, friendly ministration to the afflicted, 
is a most conspicuous feature of the work of Christ’s Church in 
our sorrow-stricken world. And wherever this feature does not 
appear, there an indispensable evidence of the Christianity of the 
heart is lacking. 


4. THE RISE OF THE DEACON TO HAvE BEEN EXPECTED. 


It is not a matter of surprise, then, that a class of officers 
should arise in the churches everywhere, charged with the duty 
of beneficent financial administration—that the Christian diac- 


*Gladden, “The Christian Pastor,” p. 448. 


158 Christianity as Organized 


onate should appear. It would rather have been matter of 
surprise if such officers had not arisen. 

The word deacon in its Greek form (Séxovos) is freely used in 
the sense of servant or attendant, both in classic literature and 
in the New Testament. In the New Testament it is given to 
household servants, as, for instance, in the narrative of the 
wedding in Cana—“But the servants (ddé«ovo.) that had drawn 


992 


the water knew; to Christian ministers in general, as in Paul’s 
expostulation with the schismatic Corinthians—“What then is 
Apollos? and what is Paul? Ministers (ddxovo) through whom 
ye believed;’”* and even to civil rulers—“For he is a minister 
(diéxovos) of God to thee for good.”* So, not only Timothy, 
Paul, Apollos, Tychicus, and Epaphras, but Roman magistrates 
also are called deacons. 

Our Lord himself, coming into the world as he did, “not to 
be ministered unto but to minister (Suxovqom),” is called by the 
Apostle Paul a Sdxoves to confirm the truth of God to Israel and 
to show forth his mercy to the other peoples.” 

This, therefore, was the common term which, through a proc- 
ess of specialization such as one may see going on at any time 
in any language, was fixed instinctively upon a certain class, or 
order, of church officers. So they were called, not in a general 
sense but technically, deacons.* 

What, then, were the deacon’s official duties? To such a 
question the New Testament, strange as it might seem, offers no 


1Tt also occurs a few times, and in the same sense, in the Septuagint; as, 
for example, in Esther fi. 2: “Then said the king’s servants that ministered 
(of didxovo.) unto him.” (See also ch. i. 10 and ch. vi. 3.) 

*John ii. 9. 

“The primary meaning of didkovoc, as it meets us in Greek literature 
generally, is a servant or slave in the household, whose chief duty consists 
in waiting on his master at table, and sometimes in marketing for him.” 
(Hort, “The Christian Ecclesia,” p. 202.) It is one of the words that the 
gospel has glorified. 

=r (Com ities: 

“Rom. xiii. 4. See also 1 Thess. iii. 2; Eph. vi. 21; Col. i. 7. 

5Rom. xv, 8. °Phil. i. 1; 1 Tim, iii, 8, 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 159 


direct answer. Certain qualifications for the office are, indeed, 
enumerated in a pastoral epistle: Deacons must be grave, sin- 
cere in speech, temperate, not avaricious, firm in conscientious 
conviction of Christian truth, pure and blameless in life, “ruling 
their children and their own houses well.’”* But these qualifica- 
tions, it will be noticed, are not official but purely personal. 
They show what a man who is a deacon must be, not at all what 
a deacon must do. ‘They are also spiritual, not intellectual. 
_ There is none of them but is wholly applicable to the private 
Christian; there is none that offers the slightest positive hint as 
to the functions of the diaconate. They offer only this negative 
suggestion: In the description of the good deacon, as here given, 
no mention is made of either teaching or oversight, whereas in 
the corresponding description of the good presbyter, or bishop,” 
these two duties are mentioned. Thus it is at least fairly sug- 


gested that the deacon’s office was not one either of teaching or 
of oversight. 


! But it may be that some light is thrown upon the subject by 


that election of church officers narrated in the sixth chapter of 
the Acts. Let us then recall the familiar story. Not long after 
the Day of Pentecost—perhaps a few months only—complaints 
began to be heard in the church at Jerusalem of a lack of con- 
sideration for the widows of Greek-speaking Jews as compared 
with those of Palestinian Jews, in “the daily ministration”—the 
distribution of money or food, or perhaps of both. The dissat- 


isfaction was probably without just cause; for the distribution 
had been made by the Apostles themselves, and we cannot be- 
lieve it likely that they were actuated by even an unconscious 
spirit of favoritism. But, however this may have been, action 
| was taken, at the suggestion of the Apostles, to quiet the com- 
plaints. Seven men, of the very best in the church—and some- 
‘what probably, as their Greek names suggest, of the Greek- 
speaking people—were chosen to attend to this matter of the 


——— 


17 Tim. iti, 8-12, aTDiniiiie2-7 10 Pet, y.'2) 31 


160 Christianity as Organized 


distribution of the common fund." Now if in their appoint- 
ment we are to find the origin of the Christian diaconate, it is 
clear that originally this office had to do with monetary affairs. 
It was a service of “tables.” More specifically it was a service 
of the table of the poor—such as among the Wesleyans of to- 
day, for illustration, is assigned to the “poor-steward.” 

Indeed, if these men were deacons in the sense in which the 
word was afterwards technically used, then the diaconate ante- 
dates the presbyterate; and we have here an account of the in- 
stitution of the oldest permanent office in the Christian Church. 
But is it so? The question, though affecting no vital interest of 
ecclesiastic polity, has been repeatedly discussed. And the fairly 
estimated result of the argument pro and con is, that the historic 
continuity of the office or the Seven with that of the later- 
mentioned deacons has not been proved. ; 

In favor of the identity of the two offices, it has been held 
(1) that the appointment is narrated with a directness and a 
fullness of detail that suggest the creation of a new and im- 
portant institution of the Church; (2) that the office is called 
a ministering (Saxovia, y, 1); (3) that it was believed in post- 
apostolic times that these men were the first deacons—so that, 
for example, in the city of Rome and in some other cities the 
number of deacons was limited to seven, as it was also by the | 
Council of Neocesarea (315), in imitation of what was sup-| 
posed to be apostolic example; (4) that the duties of the office 
were essentially the same as those of the post-apostolic diaconate. 

In reply it has been urged (1) that the significance of this| 
appointment with reference to the common treasury of the 
church in Jerusalem at the time, to the wise arrest of the first 
threatening schism, to the relieving of the Apostles of immediate 


1Acts vi. 1-6. 
The number was determined probably by its significance as the symbol 
of completeness. (Cf. Rev. i. 4, 12, 16, 20; iv. 5, and other passages.) , 
2“The deacons ought to be seven in number, according to the canon, even | 
if the city be great. Of this you will be persuaded from the book of Acts.”) 
(Canon XV.) a 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 161 


financial oversight in order that they might be free to employ 
themselves exclusively in their proper work, and to the intro- 
duction of Stephen as the first Christian martyr and the pre- 
cursor of the Apostle to the Gentiles—that these considerations 
are sufficient in themselves to account for the space allotted to 
this appointment in the New Testament narrative; (2) that the 
appointees are nowhere called deacons, but are referred to in 
the twenty-first chapter of the Acts as simply “the Seven,” and 
as to their ministering (Sxovia), the word is evidently used in 
an untechnical sense, just as the same word is used in this very 
chapter with reference to the Apostles themselves (v. 4); (3) 
that post-apostolic opinion on such a point is of uncertain value; 
(4) that the pressing need for some such office in Jerusalem 
and elsewhere may account for its earlier and local, as well as 
its later and general, appearance, without the supposition of any 
historic connection between the two." 

But may not the appointment of the Seven be regarded as at 
least a precedent for the formal institution of the diaconate?” 
If so, it is still unquestionable that this later and universal 
office was from the first a ministry of money. If not, we might 
turn toward the light that is thrown back upon the New Testa- 


+Chrysostom regards the office of the Seven as altogether local and tem- 
porary: “Whence I think it clearly and manifestly follows that neither dea- 
cons nor presbyters is their designation; but it was for this particular rea- 
son they were ordained.” (Homily on Acts, in loco.) 

Some scholars of the present day—for example, Dr. Lindsay (in “The 
Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries,” p. 116)—are inclined to 
identify the Seven with the presbyters mentioned in Acts xi, an opinion 
which Hort (“The Christian Ecclesia,’ p. 62) regards as “a very improb- 
able hypothesis.” 

Cf. Weiss, “Biblical Theology of the New Testament” (E. T.), Vol. I, 
p. 189. 

2“There is of course no evidence for historic continuity between the Seven 
and either the Ephesian dcdxovoe. or the developed order of deacons in later 
times. The New Testament gives not the slightest intimation of such a 
connection. But the Seven at Jerusalem would of course be well known to 
St. Paul and to many others outside Palestine, and it would not be strange 
if the idea propagated itself.” (Hort, “The Christian Ecclesia,” p. 209.) 


II 


162 Christianity as Organized 


ment diaconate from the post-apostolic age—which we will do 
forthwith. 


5. THE DIACONATE IN THE Post-ApostToLtic AGE. 


In the earliest post-apostolic literature—such as the Epistle of 
Clement of Rome, the Didache, the Pastor of Hermas, the 
Epistles of Ignatius and that of Polycarp—the deacon is men- 
tioned, and, as in 1 Timothy, blamelessness of character and life 
is required of him; but nothing is said as to his duties. Appar- 
ently these were too well known to need mention. Probably the 
nearest approach to information concerning them may be found 
in the Pastor of Hermas, where deacons are spoken of who 
“plundered widows and orphans of their livelihood, and gained 
possessions for themselves by their ministry.’”” Here at least is 
an intimation that their office had to do with money contributed 
for the support of widows and orphans. A century later, Cyp- 
rian of Carthage tells of Nicostratus, an unfaithful deacon, who 
had “abstracted the Church’s money by a sacrilegious fraud, 
and devoured the deposits of the widows and orphans.”* Jerome 
also speaks of the deacon somewhat disparagingly—in compari- 
son with the presbyter—as a “mere server of tables and of 
widows.”* In the early days of Christianity, therefore, the 
deacon’s office, it is plainly implied, had to do with the Church’s 
money. And unhappily this sacred treasure was sometimes in- 
trusted to thievish hands, as in the later and the present time. 

We have seen that the qualifications for the diaconate, as de- 
picted in the first letter to Timothy, are moral and spiritual. 
They are also, let us now observe, fully as great as those re- 
quired for the higher office of presbyter, or bishop"—indeed, es- 
sentially the same.” So, after the enumeration of the presbyter- 
bishop’s qualifications, the Apostle adds, ‘Deacons in like manner 
must be grave,”* and so on. Even more noteworthy is the de- 
scription of the men who, under the advice of the Apostles, were 


1Sim. ix. 26. 2Epistle XLVIII. (LIL). 5In his Epistle to Evangelus. 
“t Tim. iii. 1-7. *Titus i. 5-8. ®t Tim. iii, 8-12, 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 163 


to be chosen for the ministry of the money table in Jerusalem: 
“Look ye out, therefore, brethren, from among you seven men 
of good report, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may 
appoint over this business.’ And the first mentioned of these 
appointees, Stephen, is described as ‘‘a man full of faith and full 
of the Holy Spirit.” 

Of the same general character were the qualifications for the 
diaconate in post-apostolic times. The Didache says: “Appoint 
for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men 
meek and not avaricious, and upright and proved” (c. xv.)— 
no difference being recognized as to the moral qualities needed 
in the two offices. Polycarp says: “In like manner should the 
deacons be blameless before the face of His righteousness, as 
being the servants of God and Christ, and not of men. They 
must not be slanderers, double-tongued, or lovers of money, but 
temperate in all things, compassionate, industrious, walking ac- 
cording to the truth of the Lord, who was the servant of all.’” 
So generally in the Christian writings of those times the diaco- 
nate is distinctly recognized, in its outward activity, as a lower 
office than the presbyterate, and of course lower than the single 
episcopate, when this office arose; but as to the required spiritual 
character of the incumbent, equal to either of them. Outwardly 
inferior, it was inwardly one and the same. 


6. Wuy SucH HicH QUALIFICATIONS? 


Will any one ask, Why such high spiritual qualities for what 
seems to have been not only a very simple but even a semi- 
secular business? Because in Christianity—that is to say, ac- 
cording to the innermost truth of life—nothing is secular, but 
every human interest stands disclosed in its ideal sacredness. 
Money is a means of the communion of saints. Giving and re- 
ceiving is an ordinance of Christian love. A “grace” and a 
“fellowship” (xowovia) it is called by the Apostle of the Gentiles 


*Acts vi. 3. ?To the Philippians, c. 5. 


164 Christianity as Organized 


when gathering gifts of money for Jews." Buying and selling 
is as truly a moral as an economic interchange. The finances 
of the Church may be so conducted—with such equity, wisdom, 
Christlike kindness—as to make them a spiritual power. Lucre, 
which is so often “filthy” that the word is commonly used in 
that ill sense, becomes in the hands of honesty entirely clean, and 
in the hands of benevolence powerful for good. “The silver is 
mine, and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah of hosts.” Verily 


“money may always be a beautiful thing; it is we who make it ; 


grimy.” 


We have already been led to lay emphasis upon the fact that 


the ministration of the Church is distinctively not to the body 
but to the spirit. And we are now reminded that this very min- 


7 


istration to the spirit may be made by means of material things — 


—through giving food, through the good and right use of 
money. 
But let us, lingering a little upon this truth, turn to the passage 


itself in 2 Corinthians, in which giving is called a “grace.” Or 
rather let us turn to the two whole chapters, the eighth and the 


ninth; for this is the one subject of them both. To give money, 
by taking part in a collection for poor Christians—can we 


imagine how it could be named with greater affluence of spiritual 
significance than to be called a “‘grace’’ (xdpis) ? It is the word 
which the Apostle applies in this same connection to our Lord’s — 
giving of the treasures of his own truth and glory for the en-— 


richment of his people: “Ye know the grace (xdapw) of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes 


he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich.’” — 
A Christian use of money, then—what is it? A recognition of 
common kindly human relationships, and nothing more? It is 
an expression of God’s grace in the heart. It shows a spirit of © 


good will that may be called by the same name as that grace of 


our Lord Jesus Christ—though the difference of its greatness 


2) Comite *ch. viii. 9. 


oe 


Service: Deacon—Early Office 165 


in him and in us is no less than infinite—which was shown in 
his own self-giving to the world. 
But here is something else to be noted. Paul reminds the 


Corinthians that these gifts of money about which he is writing 


are not to be conveyed by himself alone to the needy Christians 
in Jerusalem. On the contrary, the various contributing church- 
es have, with his codperation, appointed certain brethren—Luke, 
Trophimus, and others perhaps—to go with him as joint con- 
veyers of the money. 


Why so? In order to avoid, as far as possible, all occasion 


of insinuation or suspicion, on the part of Paul’s enemies, as to 


his fair dealing in this matter. If he alone should handle the 


| money, they who were accusing him already of this or that evil- 
doing might accuse him—absurd as it would now seem to all 


the world—of gathering it professedly for the poor but really 


_to be appropriated, at least in part, to his own personal use. 


Now such a slander must, if possible, be avoided. For it be- 


_ hooves the Church to “take thought for things honorable not 
_ only in the sight of the Lord but also in the sight of men;’” and 
_in the early centuries, as now in our own, one of the commonest 
sins was the misuse of money. In the early centuries, as now in 
_ our own, therefore, one of the commonest suspicions of untrust- 


worthy character was that a man had acted dishonestly with 


other people’s money placed in his hands. Let the Church, then, 
_be careful to avoid all occasion for such suspicions. For it must 


take thought for honorableness even “in the sight of men.” Paul 
himself would have its good reputation, as intrusted to his keep- 


_ ing, safeguarded by all proper precautions. 


Accordingly it was the wisdom of the Church to call for the 
finest possible Christian character in its financial officers. The 
deacon must, through the abiding power of the Holy Spirit, live 
above even the subtlest temptation to dishonesty. 

But who are the poor? An answer of early Christianity was, 
They are God’s altar. To give to a widow, an orphan, or the 


1ch. viii. 21. 


166 Christianity as Organized 


poor, was to lay an offering upon the altar of God." Whatsoever 
might be given to them was offered to him. And why should it 
not have been so conceived of? For these were the classes of 
needy ones to whom their fellow-Christians must, first of all, do 
good and communicate; and was it not written, “But to do good 
and to communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is 
well pleased?”* Blessed above all official celebrants are the 
priests and priestesses who minister at this ancient altar of God 
which “‘ye have always with you.” 

Besides, in ministries to the physical needs of men the oppor- 
tunity is constantly afforded to speak directly to the life of the 
conscience and the heart. “Let the deacons going about,” says 
an ancient homily, “look after the bodies and the souls of the 
brethren.”” No wonder that two of the Seven, Stephen and 
Philip, are soon found preaching the word with power to the 
people. Surely the deacon might magnify his office in the name 
of Jesus, the visiting Healer and Teacher. 


7. THROUGH FLESH TO SPIRIT. 


Are there those who serve in an office which they can magnify 
as fittingly in that Name in the Church of to-day? There are 
those who seek out the most repulsive places of their own land, 
or even go to the ends of the world, to do such twofold service. 
The pitiful cry of human need will not let them rest at home. 
Who then are these Christian men and women? Waving them 
farewell from the shores of their native land, do we possess 
enough of their spirit to understand it? The typical arm-chair 
critic does not. Or perhaps we have been so absorbed in the 


consideration of great and beautiful abstract truths, or in ideal- — 


Knowing that they [the widows] are the altar of God.” (Polycarp to 
Philippians, 4.) 

“An orphan who, by reason of his youth, or he that by the feebleness 
of old age, or the incidence of a disease, or the bringing up of many chil- 
dren, receives alms, such a one shall not only not be blamed but shall be 
commended; for he shall be esteemed an altar to God.” (Apost. Const., Bk. 
VE 30) 

*Heb. xiii. 16. 


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Service: Deacon—Early Office 167 


izing men and conditions in the Ancient Catholic Church, as not 
to see what is directly before our eyes. Some day, it may be, we 
shall awake to acknowledge with regret: There stood among us 
those whom we knew not. 

The medical missionary may be taken as an illustrative ex- 
ample. His brothers—in China, let us say—are without the 
knowledge of medicine and surgery. Most of them are misera- 
bly poor. They are helplessly suffering by the million with 
wounds or diseases from which he has the power to bring re- 
lief. He goes to heal them. They do not know themselves to 
be the objects of a Divine love and care. He goes to teach them 
by the fitly spoken word and by his own life of Christly wisdom 
and love. There, in the dispensary, the hospital, and the homes 
of the people, he lives cheerfully, manfully, unselfishly from 
day to day. In his hand are veritable leaves of healing from the 
Tree of Life; and men are saved, body and soul.’ 

Has the kingdom of God come with power? Is Jesus of 
Nazareth Christ, or must the Messianic idea still await the time. 
when it shall be made a fact? “Lepers are cleansed, 
the poor have good tidings preached to them.’” 


+“True medical missionary work is evangelical. Our Lord never separated 
the two, but preached or taught and healed as he went, and so should 
wo ree 
“The medical missionary has unrivaled opportunities for preaching the 
gospel; and while he carries the lancet in one hand, he must ever be ready 
with the sword of the Spirit in the other. 4 

“One very rainy day my wife and I sat down to look into the spiritual 
history of these inquirers. . . . We were surprised and delighted to find 
that every one of them came to us as patients. Humanly speaking, these 
two little churches would never have been started but for that medical 
work, and we might never have met those Christians, who shortly after 
were baptized, but for their having some little trouble that required the as- 
sistance of a doctor.” (“World-Wide Evangelization: Addresses Delivered 
before the Fourth International Convention of the Student Volunteer Move- 
ment,” pp. 5II, 512, 524.) 

*Luke vii. 22. 


IV. 
THE DEACON: HIS LATER AND PRESENT OFFICE. 


IF now we ask for direct information as to the duties per- 
taining to the office of deacon, we shall find that the very earliest 
given in Christian literature represents him as the bishop’s as- 
sistant. He is compared to Timothy in attendance upon the 
apostle Paul, and is even enthusiastically called the bishop’s min- 
istering angel. “What are the deacons,” asks an early Chris- 
tian writer, “but imitators of the angelic powers, fulfilling a 
pure and blameless ministry unto him [the bishop], as the holy 
Stephen did to the blessed Jesus, Timothy and Linus to Paul, 
Anencletus and Clement to Peter?”* They must report every- 
thing to the bishop, and must do nothing without his knowledge 
and authority. They are called, in still extravagant metaphor, 
the bishop’s eye and ear and mouth and soul.” 


1. ASSISTANCE THREEFOLD. 


More particularly this assistance rendered by the deacon to 
the bishop was threefold: First, in the conduct of worship; sec- 


1Tonatius, “To the Trallians” (Longer Recension), 6. 

“The bishop and presbyters sat on their “thrones” in the church; the 
deacons stood near them, like the sailors of a ship of which the bishop was 
commander. (Apost. Const. II, 57.) See also Jerome, “To Evangelus:” 
“But even in the church of Rome [where the diaconate was exceptionally 
honored] the deacons stand while the presbyters seat themselves.” 

“Let him [the deacon] not do anything at all without his bishop.” (Apost. 
Const., Bk. II., 31, 32.) 

“Let the deacon refer all things to the bishop. . . . But let him order 
such things as he is able by himself, receiving power from the bishop. é 
But the weighty matters let the bishop judge; but let the deacon be the 
bishop’s ear and eye and mouth and heart and soul, that the bishop may not 
be distracted with many cares, but only with such as are more considerable, as 
Jethro did appoint for Moses, and his counsel was received.” (Jbid., Bk. 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 169 


ondly, in ministration to the poor and the distressed; thirdly, in 
the exercise of discipline. 

(1) The deacon’s service in the conduct of worship is seen 
in his connection with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.” 
For this was the central rite about which all the forms of con- 
gregational worship were gathered. The early liturgies that 


_have been transmitted to our day are, without exception, sacra- 


mental. Preaching was not referred to in the liturgies, it hav- 
ing already become a fast-diminishing quantity. Meetings for 
prayer and mutual edification had ceased. The celebration of 
the Lord’s Supper, however, was regular and frequent—every 


_ Sunday or oftener. The bishop, or pastor, had charge of the 


services; but the deacon must also be present as an assistant. 
It was his part to keep order in the congregation; sometimes to 
read the Gospel; to arrange the sacramental vessels; to pro- 
nounce such liturgic sentences as, “Let us attend in wisdom,” 
“Tn peace let us pray to the Lord,” “Salute ye one another with 


the holy kiss;” and to distribute the consecrated bread and wine 


to the communicants.” 
(2) It is worth while to note also that the service of the 
poor and the service of the Lord’s table, the two chief duties of 


_ the deacon in the early churches, were more closely related than 


might at first sight appear. For it was from the Lord’s table 
that the wants of the poor were supplied—as they had formerly 
been supplied from the love feast. There the contributions of 
the people were brought, and thence through the hands of the 


1“And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have ex- 
pressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of 
those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over 
which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they 
carry away a portion.” (Justin Martyr, “First Apology,” 65.) 

Cf. the Form of ordaining Deacons in the Methodist Episcopal Churches: 
“Tt appertaineth to the office of a deacon to assist the elder in divine service, 
and especially when he ministereth the holy communion to help him in the 
distribution thereof.” 

2“The Divine Liturgy of James,” passim. 


170 Christianity as Organized 


deacons distributed among the necessitous cases.. Worship and 
service, the reverent heart and the helping hand, were joined 
together, as in spirit they should always be. Not, however, that 
the deacon’s whole duty to the poor was embraced in the cir- 
cumspect distribution of what was brought for them to the 
Lord’s table. He must also seek them out for any possible min- 
istration at their homes, or in their homelessness. So he was 
largely an out-of-doors officer—expected to seek as well as be 
sought, to take the initiative, to do much personal beneficent 
work. 

(3) But it was not only thus that he became as “eyes to the 
bishop.” A more difficult duty was laid upon him. The deacon 
must be a minister of discipline as well as of food or money. 
Actively going about, he must observe the conduct of church 
members, prevent, when possible, the commission of sin, check 
the disorderly, reporting all things to the bishop.” In a word, 
he was instructed: “It is your duty who are deacons to visit all 
who stand in need of visitation.’ 

It was also the function of a deacon to baptize in the absence 


*Cf. the custom of modern evangelical churches. 

“Whilst these sentences are in reading, the deacons, church wardens, 
or other fit persons appointed for that purpose, shall receive the alms for 
the poor, and other devotions of the people.” (Book of Common Prayer, 
“Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper.”) Note also the same 
Order in the Methodist Episcopal Churches. 

“An offering for the poor or other sacred purpose is appropriate in con- 
nection with this service, and may be made at such times as shall be ordered 
by the session.” (Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in 
the United States.) 

“Tt is an almost universal custom among our churches to take a collection 
at the close [of the administration of the Lord’s Supper], ‘the offering for 
the sick and needy,’ of which the deacons are the custodians and almoners.” 
(Hiscox, “The New Directory for Baptist Churches,” p. 133.) 

2“T et the deacons of the church going about with intelligence be as eyes 
to the bishop, carefully inquiring about the doings of each member of the 
church, ascertaining who is about to sin, in order that, being arrested by 
admonition by the president, he may haply not accomplish the sin. Let them 
check the disorderly.” (Clementines, Epist. to James, 12.) 

SApost. Const., Bk. III., 19 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 171 


of a presbyter,’ and with the permission of the bishop to preach’ 
—assisting thus even in the ministry of the word. 


2. THE BisHop’s ADVISER AND DEPUTY. 


But ere long the deacons became more than mere helpers or 
servants of the bishop. They became his advisers, confidants, 
deputies. Very important missions were intrusted to them. 
Hence it was not rare for individual deacons to excel their 
brethren of the next higher order, the presbyterate, in dignity 
and power. Nor, unhappily, was it rare for jealousies to arise 
between individual members of the lower and of the higher 
order. 

This advisory and confidential relation of the deacon to the 
bishop will help to account for a certain special development of 
the diaconate—for the development of the office of archdeacon. 
This office was filled from time to time by some of the most 
highly gifted and influential men of the Church: such as Atha- 
nasius in Egypt, the renowned champion of orthodoxy at the 
Council of Nice; Leo the Great and Hildebrand in Italy, the 
one “the first pope” and the other a real pope before his election 
to the papacy; Bossuet in France; and more than one, whose 
names may be readily recalled, in England. Its origin is not 
altogether clear. It may be traced back, however, to the fourth 
century. For a time it seems not to have risen to any great 
importance; and, in fact, it never did become important in the 
Eastern Church. Its evolution in the West is what we shall 
here follow. 

The archdeacon, then, seems to have been at first simply the 
senior deacon, to whom, as having been longest in office, a posi- 


“Of giving it [baptism] the chief priest (who is the bishop) has the 
tight; in the next place the presbyters and deacons, yet not without the 
bishop’s authority.” (Tertullian, “On Baptism,” 17.) 

Cf. the Form of Ordaining Deacons in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South: “It appertaineth to the office of a deacon . . . in the absence of 
an elder to baptize.” The Methodist Episcopal Church has omitted from 
this Form of Ordination the words “in the absence of an elder.” 

*Bingham, “Antiquities,” Vol. I., Bk. ii., c. 20, 11, 


172 Christianity as Organized 


tion of precedence was accorded. There was no election. Later, 
he was probably elected by bishop and deacons conjointly. Still 
later the bishop exercised the exclusive right of appointment. 

This chief deacon was charged with the instruction of the 
other deacons and the inferior clergy in the performance of 
their duties; and in the course of time, with the examination of 
candidates for the ministry, as to both literary attainments and 
personal character. The devotional services of the bishop’s 
church were under his supervision. The church funds were 
placed in his hands. 

There was also developed a rural archdeacon, to whom a cer- 
tain district of the diocese was assigned. Indeed, while at first 
there was but one archdeacon to a diocese, after the eighth cen- 
tury there were, in most cases, several. 

Nor was it necessary that the archdeacon should be chosen 
from the ranks of the deacons; for after the ninth century the 
rural archdeacon was sometimes and the city (or cathedral) 
archdeacon usually chosen from the presbyters. 

But what we have chiefly to observe is that the archdeacon’s 
principal function was to assist the bishop in the administrative 
affairs of the diocese. He was not only “the bishop’s eye and 
ear and mouth and soul,” but also his hand; he must govern as 
well as see and report. He sat in councils as the bishop’s repre- 
sentative. Indeed, the archdeacon came to have a jurisdiction 
of his own, and to rule almost as if we were the supreme ruler 
of the diocese." 

He would fain himself have become, in fact if not in name, a 
bishop. We are reminded of the feudal lords of the Middle 
Ages, who were prone to ignore the authority of their sover- 
eigns, to whom they were bound in service as vassals, and to 
reign within their respective territories as independent little 


1“Tn the eleventh and twelfth centuries the powers of the archdeacon 
reached their climax. They received a jurisdiction of their own, suspended 
and excommunicated priests, held synods, and in many ways tried to enlarge 
their rights at the expense of the bishop.” (McClintock and Strong’s Cy- 
tlopedia, Art. “Archdiaconate.”” 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 173 


kings. Of course what is illustrated in any such case is the not 
uncommon moral fault of usurpation—the agent assuming the 
rights of the principal. But the usurping archdeacon was not 
permitted to have his own way. The church councils brought 
him back into the proper diaconal relation to the bishop. 

In the Church of England the archdeacon has been retained as 
a prominent and serviceable officer. Like his medizval proto- 
type, he examines candidates for the ministry, stands very close- 
ly related to the bishop, and is charged with a large share of 
the government and administration of the diocese. 


It must be borne in mind, however, that the deacon, notwith- 
standing his large increase in dignity and power through his 
association with the bishop, remained simply a minister without 
any strictly sacerdotal functions. Only the presbyter was a min- 
ister transformed into a priest. Yet the deacons might be re- 
garded as on their way to the priesthood; for it was out of their 
order that the occupants of the higher order of the presbvterate, 
or priesthood, were selected." The diaconate became thus a 
stepping-stone to the presbyterate. 

It is true that not infrequently the deacon remained a deacon 
during life, never being ordained a presbyter. And it has con- 
tinued to be so in the Orthodox Eastern Church to the present 
day. Here the curates of parishes are in many instances life- 
long deacons. 

Usually, however, the diaconate was an office preparatory to 


1Some have supposed that a reference to this promotion of deacons to 
the order of presbyters is made in 1 Timothy iii. 13: “For they that have served 
well as deacons gain to themselves a good standing.” But the word fabudc 
does not require this interpretation—even if it should admit of it. The evi- 
dence seems to show plainly enough that the idea of such a promotion is 
of later than New Testament origin. 

“For those who have been deacons of good report and blameless purchase 
to themselves the pastorate.” (“Sources of the Apostolic Canons,” B. 6, 
Wheatley’s Translation.) 

See also the prayer at the Ordination of a Deacon: “Do thou render 
him worthy to discharge acceptably the ministration of a deacon, . . . 
that thereby he may attain a higher degree.” (Apost. Const., VIII. 18.) 


174 Christianity as Orgamsed 


the next higher. For as it is well that every business should be 
entered through an apprenticeship, so is it surely the part of 
discretion that every difficult and responsible office should be 
preceded by a period of testing and probation. He who would 
be made ruler “over five cities’” must first be found for a time 
“faithful in a very little.” And as such a period of test and 
probation for the intending presbyter, the diaconate came to be 
utilized. 

But certain retrogressive changes were also taking place. As 
to the deacon’s share in the exercise of discipline, it became less 
and less till it finally disappeared. As to the ministration to the 
poor and the distressed, which seems to have been originally the 
chief, or even the sole, function of the deacon, we find it also 
declining in prominence and importance. Because, after the 
recognition of Christianity by the State and the consequent mul- 
tiplication of churches, there was less need of such ministration. 
A broader provision was now made for the needy classes. Asy- 
lums for widows, orphans, the aged, the sick, and the poor were 
formed. Thus the larger part of the most distinctive service 
rendered in primitive times by the deacon was taken out of his 
hands.” 

And now let us look back from the view-point which we have 
reached in the history of the diaconate—say, A.D. 500—and 
note the chief changes that have occurred. The New Testament 
office, so far as can be ascertained, was (1) independent as to 
position, (2) permanent as to tenure, (3) a ministration to the 
poor as to function. The ecclesiastical office is (1) no longer 
independent but subsidiary to the episcopate, (2) no longer in 
the fullest sense permanent but preparatory to the presbyterate, 
and (3) no longer specially charged with ministration to the 
poor. But, on the other hand, the deacon attending upon the bish- 
op in various kinds of service is especially charged with a part in 
the conduct of worship, and in the case of the archdeacon with a 
part in the administration of episcopal government. 


*Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” pp. 52-54. 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 175 


The original title has been retained, but almost nothing more. 
A new office, which we cannot suppose would have been rec- 
ognized by an Apostle, has arisen under the name of the old. 


3. IN THE PRESENT AGE. 


This new or transformed office has been prominently perpetu- 
ated through the subsequent centuries. 

In the Roman Church it is the function of the deacon to ac- 
company the bishop here and there, to attend upon him when 
preaching, to announce to him the names of catechumens and 
of candidates for Holy Orders, and to report to him those within 
his diocese who are living unfaithful lives. He is also to read 
the Gospel and otherwise assist at the Mass. And in the ab- 
sence of the bishop he may expound the Gospel, though this is 
not regarded as one of his ordinary functions." 

In the two Methodist Episcopal Churches, which in this re- 
spect are formed, like the Protestant Episcopal Church, on the 
model of the Church of England, the deacon is a minister with 
authority to read and expound the Scriptures in the congrega- 
tion, to baptize, and to assist in the administration of the Lord’s 
Supper.” After serving in this office for a prescribed time, he 
is eligible to elders’ orders; and, even awaiting this second or- 
dination, he may have charge of a congregation as its pastor. 
In these four Episcopal churches, therefore, the original finan- 
cial function of the office has entirely disappeared, the liturgic 
function has been retained, as in the Church of Rome, and the 


Donovan, “Catechism of the Council of Trent,” p. 219. 

7It is true that in these churches the deacon is instructed at ordination 
that “it is his office to search for the sick, poor, and impotent, that they 
may be visited and relieved,” and is asked: “Will you do this gladly and 
willingly?’ But the charge is appropriate only because of its appropriate- 
ness to any Christian pastor. For the opportunity and duty of the elder 
toward the poor is the same as that of the deacon. It is the office of the 
“steward,” who is also instructed to “seek the needy and distressed in order 
to relieve them,” and in whose hands is placed the money with which the 
wants of the poor are to be relieved, that in Methodism more specifically 
represents the apostolic diaconate. 


176 Christianity as Organized ; 


occasional service of preaching has become obligatory and reg- 
ular.* 

In the Presbyterian, the Congregational, and the Baptist 
Churches the deacon, keeping much closer to the primitive type, 
is still chiefly a financial officer. The management of church 
funds, including the care of the poor, is largely in his hands. 
In the Congregational and the Baptist Churches he also assists 
at the Lord’s Supper, but simply as a layman; for, as in the 
Presbyterian Church, he is neither preacher nor pastor. 


4. EXTENSION OF THE DIACONATE. 


Before passing on to the so-called higher offices of the Church 
we must take note of a certain extension of the diaconate in two 
very different directions. 

(1) In the second or the third century it was extended so as — 
to include under its general idea of assistance another assistant — 
in the worship and work of the Church. This was the sub- . 
deacon. ; 

It has been surmised, not unreasonably, that the office of sub- — 
deacon arose out of two causes. One cause was the custom that — 
prevailed, at least in some churches—through the mechanical 
imitation of the New Testament precedent already referred to— 
of having but seven deacons in a congregation.” In the case of — 
a large congregation—like that of Rome, for example—more ~ 
than seven were needed; and inasmuch as they could not be had, 
the sub-diaconate was devised to supply the lack of service. 
The other cause was a desire on the part of the deacon to get _ 
rid of the less “dignified” functions of his office, and thus while 
ministering to be ministered unto. Neither of which conjectured 
causes seems able to bear the light of Christ. 


*In the Protestant Episcopal Church it is made the duty of the deacon to 
“read the Holy Scriptures and the Homilies in the church,” and “to preach 
if he be admitted thereto by the bishop.” In the Methodist Episcopal 
Churches, he is admitted “to read and expound the Holy Scriptures.” (See 
the respective Forms of Ordination.) 

?Acts vi. 1-6. 


a 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 177 


The sub-deacon served as assistant to both the deacon and 
the priest. To the deacon he brought the paten and the chalice 
for the Lord’s Supper, putting them back in their place after 
the communion. To the priest he offered water for the cere- 
monial washing of his hands when officiating. It was also his 
duty to keep order about the church door, and to give notice at 
the proper time that all penitents should quit the congregation, 
and the faithful remain. 

(2) The diaconate was extended in the direction of the ap- 
pointment of woman deacons, which shall be the subject of the 
next chapter. 


Four others of the less prominent officers that appear in the 
development of the ecclesiastic hierarchy may here also claim a 
moment’s attention—namely, the Acolyte, the Exorcist, the 
Reader, and the Doorkeeper. 

The acolyte, notwithstanding his Greek name (dxéAovfos, an at- 

_ tendant), made his appearance in the Latin Church, and seems 

_ never to have been introduced into the East. At his ordination 

_ two articles were put into his hands by the archdeacon—a pitcher, 
and a candlestick bearing a lighted taper. These were the sym- 

_ bols of his office, which was chiefly to wait upon the officiating 
priest with wine for the Lord’s Supper, and to light the candles 
in the church. It was at this lighting of the lamps, in the twi- 
light service, that the beautiful evening hymn that has come 
down to our own time was sung: 


O gladsome light 
Of the Father immortal, 
And of the celestial, 
Sacred, and blessed 
| Jesus our Saviour! 


Now to the sunset 
Again hast thou brought us; 
And seeing the evening 
Twilight, we bless thee, 
; Praise thee, adore thee. 


178 Christianity as Orgamzed 


Father omnipotent | 

Son, the Life-giver! 
Spirit, the Comforter! 
Worthy at all times 

Of worship and wonder. 


The exorcist was not at first an official in the Church, but any 
Christian who may have been supposed to possess the gift of 
casting out evil spirits." In fact, it seems to have been taught 
by some—by Tertullian, for example’—that all Christians either 
had or might have this power. 

Afterwards, however, the exorcist was a man duly set apart 
by the bishop, but without the imposition of hands, for the per- 
formance of this function. Delivering to the candidate a book 
in which were the written forms of exorcism, the bishop gave 
him the charge: “Take and commit to memory, and receive pow- 
er to lay hands on demoniacs, whether baptized or catechu- — 
mens.””* 

So far, then, the exorcist’s function might be regarded as hay- 
ing been purely imaginary and vain. Yet it was not wholly so; 
because it became his duty to pray for the sick and diseased who 


“An exorcist is not ordained. For it is a trial of voluntary goodness, 
and of the grace of God through Christ by the inspiration of the Holy © 
Spirit. For he who has received the gift of healing is declared by revela- 
tion from God, the grace which is in him being manifest to all.” (Const. 
Apos., VIIL., iii., 26.) 

Arguing against a Christian’s serving in the army, he asks: “Shall he 
diligently protect by night [keeping guard at pagan temples] those who in 
the daytime he put to flight by his exorcisms?” (“De Corona,” 11. See 
also “Apology,” 23.) 

Origen may be quoted to the same effect: “For it is not by incantations 
that Christians seem to prevail [over evil spirits], but by the name of Jesus, 
accompanied by the announcement of the narratives which relate to him.” 
(“Contra Celsus,” Bk. I., c. 6.) 

5Cf. the exorcism in the Administration of Public Baptism in the First 
Prayer Book of King Edward VI. (1549): “I command thee, unclean spirit, 
in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that thou 
come out and depart from these infants, whom our Lord Jesus Christ hath 
youchsafed to call to his holy baptism, to be made members of his holy 
body,” etc. This exorcism held its place in the Prayer Book for three years 
only, being omitted in the edition of 1552, 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 179 


were supposed to be possessed of demons, to care for them, and 
to “heal them, if possible.” 

“To heal them if possible; so we have here once more the 
idea of the healing mission of Christianity. For this may be 
taken as the real suggestiveness, whatever its accompanying 
superstitions, of the exorcist’s office. Jesus would have the 
bearers of his gospel, through all ages as we may believe, to be 
also health-bearers, “‘to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal 
the sick.’”* His churches may be storehouses of health-giving 
power. It may be so undoubtedly in our own age, through hos- 
pitals, through the promotion of medical and surgical science 
alike in Christendom and heathendom, through private minis- 
tration. But more than this: moral sanity will promote physical 
sanity. “The Elder” prayed for his well-beloved son and host: 
“That in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health, even 
as thy soul prospereth.”” And the divine law under which soul 
and body live and act together will ever give its silent Amen to 
such a prayer. Strengthen the wavering will, lift up the anxious 
or grovelling thoughts to have faith in God and to dwell upon 
whatsoever things are just, true, honorable, pure, lovely, of good 
report, excellent, praiseworthy—and the whole man will be made 
strong in this joy of the Lord. Worthy of universal accepta- 
tion is the ancient witness, that “gladness of heart is the life of 
a man,” that “envy and wrath shorten a man’s days and care 
bringeth old age before the time.”* Nor was it a mere sick 
man’s whim, when a sufferer from nervous disorder said: “Prove 
to me that God loves me, and I will leave this place a well 
man.” 

While, therefore, the Church in its ministry of healing may 
not be authorized to say to the sick or diseased, “In the name 
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk,” it may bring them health 
through prayer in Jesus Christ’s name; and, moreover, by the 
way of the conscious and regnant soul it may convey healing 
virtue even to the unconscious bodily organism. In which facts 


*Luke ix. 2. °3 John 2, *Ecclesiasticus, Bk, II., 22. 


180 Christianity as Organized 


of daily experience may be seen the “‘psychotherapy” of science 
and of religion. 

Of late the question has been raised—and illustrated by sev- 
eral examples—whether it were well that some such service of 
healing should be recognized and undertaken as one of the 
organized ministrations of a Christian church.’ 

The reader kept the church’s books of Scripture, and read the 
lessons in congregational worship. And he was needed, what- 
ever may have been true of the exorcist. Not, of course, that it 
was a new thing to have the Scriptures read to the people. That 
was a custom that dated from the days of the Apostles, and 
from far earlier days. It was a part of the order of instruction 
and worship in the Synagogue. “From generations of old, in 
every city,” the Law was proclaimed, “being read in the syn- 
agogues every Sabbath.’ Our Lord, on at least one Sabbath 
day, was reader: “He entered, as his custom was, into the syn- 
agogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.’* The Apos- 
tle Paul bids his young helper, Timothy, to attend to the “read- 
ing,’’* and directs that epistles of his own be read in the church- 
es.” Justin Martyr tells, in a classic passage, of such reading 
of the Gospels and the Prophets in his day.* But it was not 
until perhaps a generation after Justin’s time that the office of 
reader was created.” Theretofore the reading was probably done 
by one of the existing office-bearers or by a layman, as might 
seem expedient. Now it was elevated into a separate and dis- 
tinct office. 


*Fallows, “Health and Healing,” passim. *Acts xv. 21. 

®Luke iv. 16. ‘1 Tim. iv. 13. ®Col. iv. 16; 1 Thess. v. 27. 

®“And on the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country 
gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the Apostles [the Gospels] 
or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as time permits. Then 
when the reader has ceased, the president orally instructs and exhorts to 
the imitation of these good things.” (“First Apology,” 67.) 

"It is first mentioned in patristic literature by Tertullian, incidentally: 
“And so it comes to pass [among heretics] that to-day one man is their 
bishop, to-morrow another; to-day he is a deacon who to-morrow is a 
reader.” (“Against Heresies,” 41.) 


a 


——— 


Service: Deacon—Later Office 181 


And there would seem to have been a call for such an office 
in the fact that the congregations were not receiving the evan- 
gelical instruction that was needful. For the voice of the proph- 
et-preacher was coming to be heard less and less often. Be- 
sides, the bishop was in some instances an “unlearned man’’— 
that is to say, unable to read. 

So the reader was called forth, and not simply as a reader, but 
also as an expounder of the Scriptures, taking, in fact, the va- 
cated place of the evangelist." At his ordination it was hoped 
and prayed for that he might prove to be a prophetic teacher.” 
And so he did, let us believe, in some instances at least. 

But ere long the Scripture-reading degenerated into the 
merest perfunctory performance; for in the devitalized atmos- 
phere of an ever-increasing sacerdotalism the living voice of 
truth sickened and ceased.* 

The doorkeeper had the keys of the church edifice formally 
put into his hands by the bishop, and did such duties as those 
of the usher and the sexton in modern churches, 

These four offices were classed as Minor Orders. The offices 
of priest and deacon were the Higher, or “Holy,” Orders. How 
about the office of sub-deacon? That seems to have been re- 
garded as on the mystic border line between the other two, rank- 
ing with the Holy Orders in dignity and below them in power. 
But it was classed with them. 


For reader one should be appointed . . . of a plain utterance, and 
capable of clearly expounding, mindful that he rules in the place of’ an 
evangelist.” (Harnack, “Sources of the Apostolic Canons,” A. 3; pp. I5- 
7ae. D.,) 

*“Ordain a reader by laying thy hands upon him, and pray unto God and 
say: O Eternal God, . . . do thou also now look upon thy servant, who 
is to be intrusted to read the Holy Scriptures to thy people, and give thy 
Holy Spirit, the prophetic spirit.’ (Apost. Const., VIII., iii., 22.) 

*In organizing the Church of Scotland, John Knox provided for the ap- 
pointment of readers, whose duty it was to read the Scriptures and the 
congregational prayers, but not to preach or to administer sacraments. 
(Brown, “Life of Knox,’ Bk. II., p. 131.) Cf. the office of lay reader in 
the Protestant Episcopal Church. 


V: 
SERVICE: THE DEACONESS. 


WE have seen reason to believe that the diaconate is the most 
characteristic and, in name at least, the most catholic of the 
three chief offices in the Christian Church. But we shall find 
that it may claim still another distinction. It is the only one of 
the three which (except in a few not significant instances) has 
opened its doors for the admission of women. 

This of course is no matter of mere circumstance or accident. 
Is it not an official recognition of a certain immense amount of 
special fitness for Christian ministration that would otherwise 
fail to be utilized? Sympathetic personal service to the needy 
in body or mind—that was the primitive diaconal office. But 
the same is a distinctive gift and grace of womanhood. For this 
reason a church itself may be fittingly thought of as woman and 
mother—“the elect lady and her children.’”* One need not be 
surprised, therefore, if it should appear that the deaconess more 
nearly than the deacon represents, in the present day, the original 
idea of the Christian diaconate.” 


1. RISE OF THE WOMAN’S DIACONATE. 


The office of deaconess seems to have had its rise in the East. 
As to when and under what circumstances, however, it is im- 
possible to tell. Prior to the fourth century there is no refer- 
ence to it as an existing institution anywhere in Christian lit- 
erature. Neither Ignatius, nor Tertullian, nor Origen—none of 
the fathers of the second or the third century—makes any men- 


42 John 1. 

2“Tt is no usurpation of office, but the redemption of office, for them 
[ministering women] to organize a corporate existence of their own which 
will require the normal authority of the Church to follow if it fail to lead. 
Already its male deaconship is comparatively idle, being superseded by the 
voluntaryism of woman.” (McGill, “Church Government,” p. 393.) 


(182) 


Service: The Deaconess 183 


tion of such an office.” The probability is that it attained no 
prominence, even if it had been instituted, before the fourth cen- 
tury. 

True, a very early suggestion of some such office may be found 
in a letter from the pen of a pagan writer. This letter is one of 
the famous official communications of Pliny the Younger, pro- 
consul of Bithynia, about A.D. 112, to the emperor Trajan. 
The cultured Governor writing to his intimate friend, the 
wise and energetic Emperor, concerning the inquiries he has 
been making into the beliefs and practices of the Christians, tells 
of having put to the torture, in the course of his investigations, 
two maidservants “who were called deaconesses (ministre).’” 
But whether the word ministra (the Latin equivalent of daxcncca, 
woman servant), as here used, implies membership in a sister- 
hood of deaconesses, in the present sense of the word, is very 
doubtful. It has been conjectured also that a certain Christian 
woman, Grapte, mentioned by Hermas in “The Pastor,’’* was an 
official deaconess—the merest guess. 

Very different, however, is the evidence offered on this sub- 
ject by the fourth and fifth centuries. Here we have not only 
the testimony of individual writers, such as Basil the Great, 
Chrysostom, and the historian Sozomen, to the existence of the 
order of deaconesses, but also the decrees of General Councils 
for its regulation.* 

_ Here indeed, in the fourth century, we shall find what might 
be called the golden age of the woman’s diaconate. Chrysostom 
(347-407), for example, had as many as forty deaconesses em- 
ployed in his church in Constantinople, and six others in a 


*Passages in writers of this period that have sometimes been used to 
show the existence of the office of deaconess—for example, Ignatius to the 
Smyrneans, “Conclusion,” and Tertullian, “On the Veiling of Virgins,” c. 
ix.—are better understood as having no reference to this office. 

2Ep. X. 96. 

®“You will write, therefore, two books, and you will send one to Clemens 
and the other to Grapte, . . . and Grapte will admonish the widows and 
the orphans.” (Hermas, Vis. ii. 4.) 

“Council of Nice, Can. XIX.; Council of Chalcedon, Can. XV. 


184 Christianity as Organized 


suburban church. His numerous letters, written in exile, to the 
leading spirit among them, a high-born and wealthy woman who 
devoted her whole fortune and all else, with extreme ascetic self- 
denial, to her chosen ministry, are all aglow with Christian ad- 
miration and eulogy. “My lady, the most reverend and reli- 
gious deaconess Olympias,” is the title by which he addresses 
her. Nor was the brave and peerless martyr-preacher the only 
great church leader of that age who highly approved the order. 

Not, however, till the fifth century is there proof of its ex- 
tension into the West. Not until the close of the eighth century 
does it appear in the city of Rome.” Never did it attain unto any 
considerable strength as a Western institution. 


2. DEACONESS AND “‘Wipow.” 


In tracing this history care must be taken not to confuse the 
deaconess and the Widow. Even in the apostolic churches, there 
was an order of Widows, which reappears, perhaps in substan- 
tially the same form, in the second and some succeeding cen- 
turies. They were appointed to membership in the order—“en- 
rolled as a widow”’—though by what authority is unknown. 
And the apostolic requirement of not less than sixty years as 
the age of enrollment was more or less strictly observed. 

It may be asked, Were these aged women to be cared for by 
the Church, or were they to care for others? Both. They were 
first of all to be cared for by the Church. They were its bene- 
ficiaries. Like the widows of a still earlier time in Jerusalem,” 
being in need, they had a recognized share in the offerings of 
the congregations—till, indeed, under the Emperor Constantine, 
an allowance was made them by the State. But this was not all 
that their enrollment meant. At least in post-apostolic times 
they were also charged, certainly in some instances, with minis- 
terial duties. These duties were either to give themselves to 


1Smith and Cheatham, “Dictionary of Biblical Antiquities,” Art. Dea- 
coness. Cecilia Robinson, “Ministry of Deaconesses,” pp. 58, 80. 
27 Tim. vy. 9-11. 5Acts vi. 1-6. 


Service: The Deaconess 185 


prayer and fasting in seclusion, especially as intercessors for 
their fellow-Christians, or to nurse the sick, counsel the young 
women, and lead heathen women to Christ.” 

But it is evident that the Widows were not the same as the 
deaconesses, though in some respects noticeably similar. Un- 
like the deaconess, the Widow was not introduced into her office 
by the imposition of hands (consecration), and did not serve as 
an assistant in baptism or as an usher in the congregation. Be- 
sides, it was distinctly required that the Widow should be sub- 
ject to the deaconess together with the other office-bearers of the 
Church.” 

But as to condition in life, deaconesses were usually, though 
not invariably, widows. Because in that day very few women 
remained unmarried till old enough to be eligible to the order of 
deaconess—that is to say, till forty years of age. 

Probably for this reason, in addition to the fact of similarity 
in service, the distinction between the order of deaconess and that 
of Widow was lost sight of. In point of fact, however, it was 
not lost sight of in the East, where the order of deaconess was 
well known, but only in the West, where the order was never 
sO prominent or prosperous. “The consecration of Widows 
whom they [probably the Eastern Churches] call deaconesses 
[which in fact they were, else they would not have been conse- 
crated],”’ was the language of a Gallic Council in the sixth 
century. Naturally enough, the same confusing of two sep- 
arate and distinct orders of women appears also in some of the 


1“Three widows shall be appointed: two to persevere in prayer for all 
those who are in temptation, and for the reception of revelations where 
such are necessary, but one to assist the women visited with sicknesses. 
She must be ready for service, discreet, communicating what is necessary to 
the presbyters, not avaricious, not given to much love of wine, so that she 
may be sober and capable of performing the night services, and other loving 
service if she will.” (“Sources of the Apostolic Canons,’ A. 5 (Wheatley’s 
Translation), pp. 19-21. Cf. Apost. Const., III. 5.) 

“Obedient to their bishops, and their presbyters, and their deacons, and 
besides these to the deaconesses.’ (Apost. Const., III. 7.) 

Council of Epaone (517), Can. XXI. 


186 Christianity as Organized 


Western ecclesiastical writers of those days. And it may be met 
with in some modern writers and scholars.” 


3. THE PRIMITIVE DEACONESS. 


What were the duties of a deaconess? In general it was her 
duty to minister to women in such relations as she could fulfill 
better than the deacon. For such ministrations there was then a 
special demand, because of certain ceremonies connected with 
the rite of baptism, and, as a more general reason, because of 
the prevalent customs as to the separation of the sexes.” The 
opportunities of a present-day woman missionary in the Orient, 
where manners and customs change so slowly from ancient to 
modern, may serve somewhat to illustrate these relations. The 
deaconess instructed female candidates for church membership, 
both before and after baptism, and assisted in the baptismal cer- 
emony. She visited women in their homes—especially, it would 
seem, Christian women in pagan households—to tend them in 
sickness and to speak a word of instruction or comfort. In her 
sphere, like the deacon in his, she distributed money and pro- 
visions among the poor, and reported cases of sickness and des- 
titution to the bishop.* In time.of worship she served as door- 
keeper or usher—‘‘guardian of the holy gate”—to show any 
woman stranger to a seat among the women of the congrega- 
tion.” In fact, like the Young People’s Society of Christian 
Endeavor, in our own time, which is “meant to do anything that 
the Church wishes it to do,” the ancient deaconess was apparent- 


For example, even in Bingham, “Antiquities,” Bk. II., c. 22, 

?Apost. Const., III. 15, 16. 

®Apost. Const., IIT. 15. 

“The most important of the functions of the Deaconess was that which 
related to the administration of baptism. The rites connected with this sac- 
rament were elaborate. Immersion was preceded by the anointing of the 
whole body. Where the candidates were women this ceremony was per- 
formed by the Deaconess. She also received them as they came up out of 
the water, and to her was committed their further instruction in the faith.” 
(Cecilia Robinson, “The Ministry of Deaconesses,” p. 65.) 

*Apost. Const., III. 19. *Apost. Const., II. 57. 


Service: The Deaconess 187 


ly intended to make it her life work to serve the Church in any 
way appropriate to her position and possible to her powers. She 
was instructed, for example, to be zealous “in matters concerning 
bearing tidings, traveling, service, bondservice.’”* 

There were no deaconess homes or training schools, as in 
modern times. Nor have we the record of any requirement as 
to the taking of vows by the candidate for admission into the 
order. But she seems to have been expected to render a life- 
long service. Once a deaconess, always a deaconess, was the 
spirit if not the letter of the law. 

The canonical age for ordination was at first sixty and after- 
wards forty years—‘“and that with careful testing.”” An exces- 
sively high age limit, it may be said. But it was probably not 
too high for the circumstances of the time. Widows who had 
been twice married were ineligible; for the early Church looked 
with disfavor upon second marriages, and forbade them to its 
ministers.. Virgins might be admitted into the order, and in 
certain cases married women. Though, as just said, the dea- 
coness was usually a widow. Marriage after ordination was 
forbidden under severe penalties.* 

In the earlier days of the order the deaconess was ordained by 
imposition of the hands of the bishop in the presence of the 
presbyters, deacons, and deaconesses, with a form of prayer.” 
The prayer which seems to have been customarily used was so 
beautiful and appropriate that it has been adopted, almost with- 
out change, by churches of to-day. But the imposition of hands 
was regarded by a certain provincial council in Southern Gaul as 
too strongly suggestive of an approach to the priesthood; and 
by that council it was accordingly prohibited.° 


*Apost. Const., III. 10. ?Council of Chalcedon, Can. XV. 

SApost. Const., III. 2; VI. 17. 

*“She shall be anathematized.” (Council of Chalcedon, Can. XV.) 

®Apost. Const., VIII. 19, 20. 

*“Deaconesses shall no longer be ordained, and [in divine service] they 
shall receive the benediction only in common with the laity [not among those 
holding clerical offices].” (Synod of Orange (441), Can. XXVI. See Hefele, 
“History of the Councils, Vol. III., p. 163.) 


188 Christianity as Organized 


Indeed, not only was the imposition of hands—a relatively un- 
important matter—discontinued in one province; but the order 
itself soon began to show signs of decadence, even in the East, 
where it was once so flourishing. 

The apparent causes of the decline of so high and fine a form 
of organized Christianity were such as the following: (1) The 
establishment of asylums decreased somewhat the demand for 
deaconesses as well as for deacons. (2) After baptism by pour- 
ing or sprinkling, and the baptism of infants, became the prev- 
alent practice, the services of the deaconess were no longer need- 
ed in the administration of this sacrament. (3) Monasticism 
disparaged the office by contemning woman, and by substituting 
the nunnery for the field of active service—seclusion taking the 
place of ministration.’ (4) Sacerdotalism offered scanty en- 
couragement to any form of lay ministration; for its idea was 
that of a mediating priesthood, not that of a ministering church. 

So fell the woman’s diaconate into disuse. By the end of the 
sixth century in the West, and of the twelfth century in the 
East, it was rapidly ceasing to be. But it cannot be said to have 
been killed by decrees of councils. A Gallic council, as we have 
seen, did forbid it the rite of ordination—substituting for ordi- 
nation, apparently, a simple diaconal benediction. And a hun- 
dred years afterwards another Gallic council abolished even this 
diaconal benediction, and thus left the order without any official 
recognition within the province represented.” But of course no 
mere provincial council could destroy the whole order of dea- 
conesses, East and West. It died of a change of environment 


“Tt is clear that the spirit of asceticism was growing rapidly, and over- 
shadowing the practical life of service. We have here the first indication. 
of one of the great causes which led to the decline of the primitive ideal of 
the Deaconess, and to her gradual absorption into the monastic orders by 
which she was presently surrounded.” (Cecilia Robinson, “The Ministry 
of Deaconesses,” p. 31.) 

2“\oreover, we determine that to no woman shall the diaconal benediction 
be intrusted by reason of the frailty of the sex.” (Council of Orleans (533), 
Can. XVIII.) 


e 


Service: The Deaconess 189 


acting upon an inner life too feeble for self-renewal and read- 
justment. 


4. REVIVAL OF THE IDEA IN THE SISTERS OF CHARITY. 


Here, then, was a form of Christian service that was permitted 
to lapse, as the darkness of the early medizevalism gathered and 
the Church continued to gain the world and lose herself. Shall 
we briefly note its reappearance and the main lines of its devel- 
opment in the modern age? 

In name the deaconess is not now to be found in either the 
Eastern or the Roman Church.’ But the most essential features 
of her office have been reproduced in the Roman Catholic order 
of Sisters of Charity. 

The founder of this order was Vincent de Paul. When in 
charge of a little parish at Chatillon, France, early in the seven- 
teenth century, he was requested, on entering the pulpit one 
Sunday, to commend a poor family to the attention of the con- 
gregation. Complying with this request, he made so strong an 
appeal in their behalf that the family soon received baskets of 
provisions greatly in excess of their needs. Vincent had the 
instinct and idea of organization. He saw that in order to make 
the charity of the people effectual it must be systematized. Ac- 
cordingly he called a meeting of the ladies of the congregation, 
laid the case before them, and organized a society, which he 
called ‘Ladies of Charity,” for regulated ministry to the poor. 
They must dress in a simple style for their visits, must be very 
attentive and forbearing, and must minister to the soul as well 
as to the body. 

The society increased in numbers, and ere long it might be 
found, here and there, throughout France. Its real success, 
however, did not keep pace with its numerical growth. For it 
was made up of married women with household cares of their 
own. Many of them also were debilitated by the enervating 


*The only exception to this assertion, I think, is the use of the name for 
certain officers in Greek convents, 


190 Christianity as Organized 


atmosphere of the fashionable world. So they soon grew weary 
of personal visits to the sick and the poor, and sent their servants 
instead. 

But there was one notable exception. Madame Louise le Gras 
(née de Merillac), a young widow of noble birth, became a 
member of the organization and devoted herself to its interests 
with untiring fidelity. In codperation with this single-minded 
Christian woman, Vincent gathered together in the city of Paris 
a company of young women unencumbered with family duties 
and cares, who would be willing to become in a real sense care- 
takers of the poor. They were themselves, for the most part, 
country girls. In the month of November, 1633, a training 
school, with only three or four in attendance, was established for 
their benefit; and they began to live in community. In this same 
year they were raised by the Archbishop of Paris into a distinct 
order, which was afterwards officially recognized by Pope Clem- 
ent DX 5 

At first they had no written rules and took no vows. After 
a few years, however, they were permitted to take vows that 
obligated them to service in the society for one year at a time. 
They were now called not “Ladies” but “Sisters of Charity ;” 
and it is by this name that they are known throughout the civi- 
lized world.’ 

The order is under the government of a successor of Vincent 
—namely, the Superior General—and, next to him in authority, 
the Mother General, who is elected triennially. Each separate 
society, or ‘“‘congregation,’’ is governed by a Sister Superior, 
who is elected by its members, and is eligible to one reélection, 
but no more. 

The rules of the order, it seems, have remained almost entire- 
ly the same as when first given by the founder himself. The 
Sisters are not nuns. “The streets of the city or the houses of 


1Maloy, “Life of St. Vincent de Paul,” chaps. iv., vili., x. 
*This is the name by which they are commonly called. But their official 
title is even more beautiful—“Daughters of Christian Love,” 


Service: The Deaconess IQI 


the sick,” said Vincent in his instructions to them, “shall be your 
cells, obedience your solitude, the fear of God your grating, a 
strict and holy modesty your only veil.” Yet they are formed 
into communities, and are eligible for admission into the order 
only after a probation of five years. It is expected that on en- 
tering they shall become life members. But their vows—the 
fourfold vow of poverty, chastity, obedience, and service to the 
poor—are made for one year only, and the renewal of them is 
voluntary from year to year. 

Their distinctive garb has been chosen in imitation of the 
costume of the peasant women in the neighborhood of Paris at 
the time of the founding of the order—just as the habit of the 
Franciscan friars is that of the Italian beggars of Francis’ day. 
The headdress was originally a small linen cap; but ere long 
there was added to it the pure and white, though grotesque, cor- 
nette. 

The rule of life is extremely rigid. The Sisters must rise at 
four o’clock in the morning, and then engage in a meditation 
and attend Mass. ‘There is also to be a particular examination 
of conscience at noon and another in the evening. No prescribed 
devotional service, or office, is required of them. “Your office,” 
said their founder, “is charity.” They must be very abstemious 
in their diet; must cultivate no intimate friendships, either with- 
out or within the order; must not ask to choose their own field 
of labor, but receive their appointments from the Sister Superior 
to such work as she may deem most suitable; must not refuse 
to do any prescribed service, however loathsome or dangerous. 
The range of their ministrations includes the hospital, the orphan 
asylum, the elementary school, the homes of the sick and the 
poor—their wards alike the motherless child and the dying sol- 
dier.* 

It need hardly be added that the praise of these ministering 
“daughters of Christian love” is on the lips of many grateful 
or sympathetic witnesses in all lands. They have strongly com- 


“The Catholic Encyclopedia,” Vol. IIL, Art. “Sisters of Charity,” 


192 Christiamity as Organized 


mended to the world not only the sadly mixed form of Chris- 
tianity which they immediately represent, but also that truest 
source of their inspiration, the Christ who lived and died for 
“the healing of the nations.’” 

But sisterhoods have not been confined to the Church of Rome, 
nor yet to the Church of the East where they have found a cer- 
tain development.” Since the year 1845 they have been estab- 
lished under various forms of organization in the Church of 
England and the Protestant Episcopal Church. Here they are 
pursuing, with more or less of Christian wisdom, their common 
objects of piety and beneficent ministration. In England they 
have multiplied considerably of late years, and in some instances 
have shown strong conventual tendencies.’ 


5. REVIVAL OF THE IDEA IN THE MODERN DEACONESS. 


But the Sister is not a deaconess. The two are only similar, 
not the same. One difference is, that the sisterhood emphasizes 
the idea of seclusion from the world, inclining toward the mo- 
nastic perversion of Christianity; while the woman’s diaconate 
emphasizes the idea of active service. The Sister would live a 
life of prayer and intercession in her religious retreat, coming 
forth, however, with faithful regularity, to do a work of mercy 
in the busy and suffering world; the deaconess, like the Christian 


“Besides this most prominent, and perhaps most worthy, sisterhood in 
the Church of Rome, there are others whose combined membership, it seems, 
about equals that of the Sisters of Charity; such, for example,.as the Sis- 
ters of Mercy, who make irrevocable vows, take the white veil, and devote 
their lives to suffering and tempted women.’ (Bancroft [Mrs. J. B. Robin- 
son], “Deaconesses in Europe,” p. 248.) 

“Communities have been formed specially for the care of the poor and 
infirm, and Russia is proud of her Sisters of Charity. . . . The sisters 
are not generally regarded as nuns. They take no vows, they have no 
statutes or regulations specially sanctioned by the Church authorities.” 
(Leroy-Beaulieu, “The Empire of the Tsars,” p. 219 ff. See also Potter, 
“Sisterhoods and Deaconesses,” p. 345 ff.) 

5A small Anglican sisterhood at St. Katherine’s, ogee and another, 
the Sisters of the Atonement, in this country, have recently gone over to 
the Roman Catholic Church, 


Service: The Deaconess 193 


preacher or pastor, would live a life of constant ministration to 
the people, gathering strength for her labors in retirement and 
prayer. 

The other chief difference is in the matter of organization. 
The sisterhood is only permitted by the Church, and it renders 
services at its own will; the woman’s diaconate is, like the preach- 
ing of the gospel or the superintendency of a Sunday school, 
under the government and at the command of the Church—a 
part of its regular “machinery.” As might be expected, there- 
fore, the Sister must live in community, while the deaconess 
may or may not.” 

It is the office of the modern deaconess, which can be found 
nowhere save in the churches of Protestantism, that shall now 
engage our attention. It began in weakness, in a veritable day 
of small things. But on that account its history may be all the 
worthier of note. ; 

A foretoken of the office appears even in the earlier years of 
the Reformation—namely, among the Mennonites’ and the Puri- 
tans.” 

Another trace of the office and work of the deaconess may be 
seen at the rise of Independency, or Congregationalism, in the 
last quarter of the sixteenth century. Robert Browne, its first 
organizer, included among the officers of a scripturally consti- 
tuted church, not only deacons, “which are to gather and bestowe 
the church liberalitie,” but also “Widowes, which are to pray for 


14“The Sisters of the Poor,” a society of Christian nurses and evangelistic 
workers, organized by Hugh Price Hughes in connection with the Wesleyan 
Forward Movement, must not be taken as a representative sisterhood. It 
is in all but the name a society of deaconesses. 

?McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia, Art. “Deaconess;” Mrs. J. B. Rob- 
inson, “Deaconesses in Europe,” p. 44. 

*“Toward the close of the sixteenth century an assembly of sixty Puritan 
ministers, in a declaration of rules and principles through which they hoped 
to reform the Church, gave directions concerning the choice of “deacons of 
both sorts—namely, men and women.” (Neal, “History of Puritans,’ Vol, 
I, p. 140.) 


13 


194 Christianity as Organized 


the church, with attendance to the sicke and afflicted thereof.’ 
The word Widow he uses undoubtedly as a New Testament 
name for deaconess.” There is also evidence that in some in- 
stances this woman’s diaconate was actually instituted, and suit- 
able persons elected to fill it, in the Independent congregations. 
But it did not become general, and was not perpetuated. 

Of similar significance was the appointment of deaconesses 
by John Wesley when (in 1736-38) a missionary of the Church 
of England, in Savannah, Georgia. It was one of the instances 
in which this quick-sighted organizer showed so true a vocation 
to regain whatever was best in the lost institutions and spirit of 
primitive Christianity. But it was also one of the grounds on 
which his opponents charged him with Romanism.” 

It was not, however, till the lapse of a century from this time 
that the modern deaconess movement made its real and effective 
beginning. For as the Sunday school, to cite a somewhat anal- 
ogous instance, finds the work of Robert Raikes in 1781, not- 
withstanding the fact of similar schools before that time, the 
starting point of its subsequent organized and continuous de- 
velopment, so the institution of modern deaconesses finds its 
starting point in the work of Theodor Fliedner in 1836. 

Fliedner was the Lutheran pastor of the village of Kaiser- 
werth-on-the-Rhine. Only a few months after his coming, in 
the year 1822, to this obscure village, his congregation of work- 
people, small at best, seemed well-nigh on the point of dispersion. 
For a silk manufactory, on which many of them were dependent 
for a living, had failed; and they must go where they could to 
get employment. Under the pressure of these conditions, Flied- 


1Robert Browne’s Book, cited in Walker’s “Creeds and Platforms of 
Congregationalism,” p. 22. 

2Cf. the following declaration of Congregational principles: 

“The Lord hath appointed ancient widows (1 Tim. v. 9, 10), where they 
may be had, to minister in the church, in giving attendance to the sick, and 
to give succor unto them, and others in the like necessities.” (Cambridge 
Platform (1648), VII. 7.) 

®’Tyerman, “Life of Wesley,” Vol. I, pp. 147, 148. 


Service: The Deaconess 195 


ner started on a nine months’ tour, to raise money for the en- 
dowment of his church. And it was a journey more fruitful of 
good results than either he or any one else could have predicted. 
He found immense riches which he had not gone forth to seek. 

In Holland and England especially the earnest and unpre- 
tending young pastor was deeply impressed with the benevolent 
institutions that came under his notice. “In both these Protestant 
countries,” he says, “I became acquainted with a number of char- 
itable institutions for the benefit of both body and soul. 

At the same time I observed that it was a living faith in Christ 
which had called almost every one of these institutions and soci- 
eties into life, and still preserved them in activity. This evidence 
of the practical power and fertility of such a principle had a most 
powerful influence in strengthening my own faith, as yet weak.” 

One form of benevolent service more particularly touched his 
heart. The prisons of both England and the Continent of that 
day were indescribably unwholesome, filthy, and immoral. Of ec- 
clesiasticism there seems to have been an adequate amount every- 
where; of enlightened practical pity for the criminal, almost none. 

Elisabeth Fry, though only a Friend, was in the midst of her 
reformatory undertakings in the prisons. Fliedner met her in 
London and became intensely interested in the work she was 
doing. On his return to Kaiserwerth he succeeded in having a 
society formed in aid of prisoners in Germany. In 1832 he was 
sent by the government as a commissioner to inquire into the 
workings of charitable institutions in England. Here he again 
met with Elisabeth Fry; and on a visit to Scotland he made the 
acquaintance of Dr. Thomas Chalmers, who warmly sympa- 
thized with his ideals. 

In September, 1833, a discharged woman convict, having 
heard of Fliedner’s sympathy with her class, appeared at his 
door, after a six miles’ walk, seeking help. A home was given 
her in his summer house. Afterwards a larger house was rent- 
ed, and its doors opened as a home for discharged women con- 


1Mrs. J. B. Robinson, “Deaconesses in Europe,” p. 54. 


196 Christianity as Organized 


victs. But it soon became apparent that those who should have 
the care of such outcasts, as well as of the sick and helpless poor, 
who were all so much in need of Christian sympathy and service, 
must be properly trained for their work. Accordingly, in May 
of the year 1836, Fliedner, with some others, drew up a set of 
statutes for a society to be called “The Rhenish Westphalian 
Deaconess Society.’’ In October of that year he opened a Chris- 
tian hospital, and in the same building a training school for dea- 
conesses. And thus arose the Mother House of all the mother 
houses and other Kaiserwerth institutions in Europe, Asia, and 
America. 

The house was unpaid for. The outfit consisted of a very lit- 
tle furniture, most of it rickety, worm-eaten, or otherwise dam- 
aged. Fliedner’s wife—his worthiest and most inspiring cola- 
borer—was its first superintendent; a physician’s daughter, Ger- 
trude Reichard, its first deaconess; a servant girl, its first pa- 
tient. 

About this Mother House there grew up from time to time 
schools for teachers, an orphan asylum, a dispensary, an insane 
asylum, a manual labor school, a publishing house, a rest cot- 
tage in the neighboring hills, and the House of Evening Rest 
(Feierabend Haus) for deaconesses worn out in the service. All 
these in the lifetime of the founder. 

Indeed, such had been the enlargement of the work that by the 
time of his death, in 1864, the number of mother houses was 
thirty, of places of work nearly four hundred, and of deaconesses 
fifteen hundred. Twenty-four years afterwards the mother 
houses numbered fifty-seven, the places of work over two thou- 
sand, and the deaconesses over seven thousand.” 

Nor is this the whole institutional outcome. For through Kai- 
serwerth’s great example the founding of other deaconess insti- 
tutions has been promoted in the Christian churches and even 
unto far-away lands. And the motto on the seal of the little 


1Mrs. J. B. Robinson, “Deaconesses in Europe,” cited from the Kaiser- 
werth magazine, Der Armen und Kranken Freund (1888), pp. 86, 87. 


Service: The Deaconess 197 


church in Kaiserwerth finds an ever-enlarging fulfillment: ‘The 
mustard seed has become a tree.” 

The Kaiserwerth institution would seem, in fact, to be the 
model which the later deaconess institutions have more or less 
closely followed. It may be worth while, then, to ask, What are 
some of its constitutional regulations? 


All the mother houses (whether in Europe or America, Berlin or Balti- 
more) are under the government of a triennial General Conference. 

Each mother house is under the immediate control of two Directors. 
These are the Inspector (or Superintendent), who must be a minister of the 
gospel, and the Sister Superior, who is matron of the house. But the 
Directors are themselves responsible to a Board of Management. 

For each deaconess there is a period of probation; a service of conse- 
cration to her office; a uniform dress; and maintenance, but nothing more, 
in sickness. 

The probation having been passed satisfactorily, she must pledge herself 
to a five years’ term of service. At the end of this time the pledge may be 
renewed. 

If a deaconess decide to marry, or if her parents or guardians demand 
her withdrawal from the institution in order that she may care for them, 
she is entitled to an honorable dismission. 

Deaconesses are sent out from the mother house to their various places 
of work—“stations,” as they are technically called—under the direction of 
the Sister Superior, and if possible never alone. 

The mother houses interchange their annual reports, and hold prayer 
meetings, the “common” prayer meeting, all at the same time—namely, the 
first of each month of the year.* 


About two-thirds of the expenses of the Kaiserwerth institu- 
tions are met by payments for services rendered by the dea- 
conesses ; and the remainder by contributions of auxiliary soci- 
eties, churches, and private individuals. 


Among the pupils of Fliedner, in the year 1851, was a cul- 
tured young English woman. Already had she become inter- 
ested, partly through the influence of Elisabeth Fry, in the in- 
structed nursing of the sick. She would fain see an improve- 
ment in the ill-kept English hospitals of the day. It was this 


1Constitution of the Deaconess Mother Houses connected with the Gen- 
eral Conference of Kaiserwerth (1901), given in Golder, “History of the 
Deaconess Movement,” Appendix. 


198 Christianity as Organized 


that awoke the desire to go, as a student of nursing, to Kaiser- 
werth. “Never have I seen a higher love,” she wrote long after- 
wards, ‘fa purer devotion, than there.” 

During the Crimean War the piteous cry of uncared-for suf- 
ferers drew this strong-hearted Christian woman, at the risk of 
her life and the loss of her health, to the military hospital at 
Scutari. She found it a house of neglect and misery inde- 
scribable; but under her organizing skill and tireless personal 
ministrations, as lady-in-chief of a force of eighty-eight woman 
nurses, it was transformed into a genuine home for sick and 
wounded soldiers. Two little books have come from her pen— 
one concerning Kaiserwerth, the other “Notes on Nursing.” And 
in the whole sisterhood of ministering women of the hospital, 
no name would be sooner mentioned, as a synonym of enlight- 
ened and influential goodness, than that of the “angel of the 
Crimea,” Florence Nightingale. 

It is a single though eminent example of the wide-reaching 
usefulness of the House of Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth-on-the- 
Rhine. 


6. IN THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES OF TO-DAY. 


In nearly all the evangelical churches of to-day—in the Lu- 
theran, the Moravian, the Reformed, the Anglican, the Scotch, 
the Methodist, the Congregationalist, and others—the woman’s 
diaconate either has become or is becoming a well-established in- 
stitution. Its form of organization, generally speaking, may be 
indicated as follows: Deaconesses for the most part must have 
a Home together ;* unmarried women only are admitted to mem- 
bership ; they must pass through a preparatory course of training; 
no vow of perpetual service is required; a simple, distinctive cos- 
tume is worn; affiliation with relatives and friends is not for- 


“Rach Deaconess not in a Home shall be under the direction of the 
Pastor of the church or officers of the society or institution in which she is 
at work; but those who are members of a Home shall be subordinate to and 
directed by the Superintendent in charge.” (“Discipline of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church”) (1904). 


Service: The Deaconess 199 


bidden; a suitable support is provided both for the time of ac- 
tive service and of disability ; the service is that of caring for the 
poor and the sick, teaching and training the young, and reform- 
ing the immoral. , 

And now shall we judge this ministry of women, both as to 
rightness and expediency, from a few commanding points of 
view ? 

(1) Its central idea. Personal service, without publicity, not 
for but to the needy and the suffering, face to face—such is the 
formative principle of the deaconess’ office. There are men and 
women who seek to rule. Some are Christian men and women. 
But great is the danger that these shall become deceivers of 
themselves and disturbers of the Church. There are men and 
women who seek to serve. Great is the promise that these shall 
become the true “apostles of the churches and the glory of 
Christ.” Better than all romance or passion for poetic beauty 
is courageous love in homely and loathsome places. It calls hour 
by hour for that which is most heroic, even the giving of a self. 
It was the Highest and Mightiest who “went about doing good.” 

In the consecration service of the Kaiserwerth deaconesses is 
the charge: “You are servants in a threefold sense; servants of 
the Lord Jesus, servants of the needy for Jesus’ sake, servants 
of one another.” 

(2) Its scriptural precedents. It has not been satisfactorily 
shown that the deaconess, like the deacon, was a recognized 
office-bearer in the apostolic churches. The passages supposed 
by some to prove it are unable to bear the strain of inference 
that has been put upon them. 

Phoebe of Cenchrez may well have been a “servant”? (d:akovos) 
of the Church, in the non-official sense of that word—just as 
she was a “succourer’’ (mpoordrs, protectress, patroness) of the 
apostle Paul and of many others.” 

The enrolled “widows” concerning whom directions were 
given to Timothy, as pastor of the church in Ephesus, were evi- 


Romy Xvi.) I, 2) 


200 Christianity as Organized 


dently aged and worthy beneficiaries rather than organized min- 
istrants of the Church." 

The name “‘women’’ (ywaikas, A. V. “wives”) in 1 Timothy iii. 
II, may be understood to mean either wives of deacons or offi- 
cial deaconesses. But if the former be taken as the meaning, 
the fact that no qualifications for the wives of bishops are given 
remains to be accounted for; and if the latter, the fact that sim- 
ply the word “women” or “wives,” with no indication of their 
occupying an official position, is left unexplained. So the case 
is doubtful.* 

It is quite certain, however, that of unofficial deaconesses there 
were not a few in the days of Jesus and the Apostles. For 
Christ had put honor upon woman and had made possible to 
her a ministry of Christian love, such as had never before glori- 
fied her life.” When, therefore, in the post-apostolic age, Chris- 
tianity went on to develop and perfect its organization, and the 
conditions of the time created a special demand for such sery- 
ices as woman could offer, it is no surprising thing that her 
ministrations should have taken some organized, or regulated, 
form. 

It was an institutional expression of the same spirit that 
prompted the women of Galilee to “minister of their substance”’ 
to the Master who had won their hearts’ devotion,* and Dorcas 
to make garments for the poor, and Lydia to constrain the mes- 
sengers of the gospel to have their home in Philippi at her 
house,” and Phcebe to be a resourceful helper of many, and Pris- 
cilla carefully to teach the ‘way of God,”* and Mary of Rome’ to 


tr Tim. v. 9, I0, 16. 

?Dean Howson has said: “It appears to me that if we take our stand 
simply on the ground of the New Testament, the argument for the recog- 
nition of Deaconesses as a part of the Christian ministry is as strong as 
the argument for episcopacy.” (Cecilia Robinson, “The Ministry of Dea- 
conesses,” p. 15.) It may be so; but neither the ministry of deaconesses 
nor that of bishops, as now existing, can find its form in the New Testa- 
ment. 

*Johniv.,273) Xvaadligs SAGtS We A= 1 Eze 1S. *Luke viii. 3. 

5Acts xvi. 14, 15, 40. °Acts xviii. 26. "Rom. xvi. 6, 


service: The Deaconess 201 


bestow much labor there, and Tryphzna, Tryphosa, and “Persis 
the beloved,” to “labor in the Lord,’ and the household of 
Stephanas to “set themselves to minister («és Saxoviavy) unto the 
saints.’”” 

We may even go back to an older and less Christian time for 
an example of such a ministry. For the ideal home-maker of 
the Old Testament was a ministering woman: 


She spreadeth out her hand to the poor; 

Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. . . . 
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; 

And the law of kindness is on her tongue.® 


(3) Its economic aim. “There is not in the world at this 
moment,’ says Hugh Price Hughes, “‘so costly and so utter a 
waste product as our average young lady—the daintiest bit of 
mechanism in the round world—cultured, dowered with love 
and enthusiasm and devotion, and courage too, yet mostly 
wasted, life mainly a thing of afternoon tea.” Shall the “waste 
product” of this pungent criticism appear in the Church as 
well as in the family? Woman is not for dollhood. She is no 
more to be flattered into an idle passivity than to be degraded 
into a drudge. Let her distinctive powers be employed, in in- 
dividual acts and habits indeed, but also through organization, 
for Christian service. 

Organization in any social sphere is for the avoidance of 
waste and the increase of power. It is to interrelate unguided 
forces, so as to make regular and perpetual that which might 


*Rom. xvi. 12. 

arCotexvis) 15: 

“Tt was women stich as Pheebe and Priscilla who created the idea of the 
female diaconate. Whether or no they received the name as an official title 
matters but little; they certainly ‘executed the office’ of a Deaconess, and 
bore splendid testimony to the value of a ministry cf women. When the time 
for definite ecclesiastical organization came, the work of women had become 
a necessity to the Church, and they received at once [hardly at once] their 
place in her ordered ministry.” (Cecilia Robinson, “Ministry of Deacon- 
esses,” p. 12.) 

®Prov. xxxi. 20, 26. 


202 Christianity as Orgamzed 


otherwise prove to be spasmodic and transient. Is the principle 
familiar even to triteness? Equally so should be the fact of its 
complete application to woman’s work in the Church of Christ. 

Throughout the Church are women whose life is without the 
inner peace and outward efficiency which come through the ac- 
ceptance of a recognized vocation. Yet many of them would 
find joy in a ministry to the poor, the untaught, the sorrowful. 
And the Church may open to them—as in the similar case of 
men who believe themselves called to the ministry of the gospel 
—the door of opportunity. It may offer them a home, food and 
raiment, companionship, direction, equipment, organization, the 
stimulus and support of a sisterhood of fellow-workers, with 
much trying self-denial in a noble and beautiful work. The 
Church would not hesitate to commission and trust them as mis- 
sionaries abroad. It would send them there as teachers, nurses, 
physicians, Bible readers, organized woman workers in the gos- 
pel of Jesus. But to set them apart for similar work at home 
is equally an economy of both active and latent spiritual forces. 

Among other indirect benefits, would it not help to make it 
known to all the people, in this age of social and industrial un- 
rest, that the Church, like her Lord, is among them “as one that — 
serveth P” 

(4) Its fruits. The divine test, here as everywhere, must be 
applied. “And let her works praise her’’—as undoubtedly they 
are doing—“‘in the gates.” 


VE 


AUTHORITATIVE SUPERVISION: THE PRESBYTER 
—HIS EARLIER OFFICE. 


Tue fact that the end of office is service does not disparage 
official oversight and authority. For these are themselves means 
of service—often the most difficult and the most fruitful of all. 
Imagine them discontinued from henceforth! “Our authority,” 
says the chief pastor of the Corinthians, ‘which the Lord gave 
for building you up and not for casting you down.” Could there 
be a truer service than edification? 


1. NoN-OFFICIAL OVERSIGHT MADE OFFICIAL. 


There is, to begin with, a non-official oversight and a non- 
official authority. In the purely private and personal relations 
of life one person may not only exercise watch-care over an- 
other, but may sometimes speak with an authoritative voice. 
“Full of goodness, filled with all knowledge,” says the same chief 
pastor writing to the Romans, “able also to admonish one an- 
other;”* and in admonition there is a certain power of com- 
mand, silent rather than expressed, that calls for obedience. “Ye 
younger,”’ says another Apostle, “be subject unto the elder.’ 
Knowledge, wisdom, experience, character, age exert an au- 
thority, for the most part unconscions, over both belief and 
practice. “Be obedient,” says even the great officialist, Ignatius 
of Antioch, “to . . . one another.’” 

But this diffused oversight and authority must be concen- 
trated. The few must act for the many. It has to be made the 
special business of some to oversee and rule, according to rec- 
ognized divine laws of social conduct—always, let it be remem- 


“2. Oaiea re ats Rom. xv. 14. 7 Pet. iv. 5: 

4“To Magnesians,” 13. So likewise “Clement to the Corinthians,” 38: “Let 
every one be subject to his neighbor, according to the gift bestowed upon 
him.” 


(203) 


204 Christianity as Organized 


bered, for the good of the ruled and not for the exaltation or 
aggrandizement of the rulers. Hence arises over all the inhabited 
earth governmental authority. The shipwrecked sailor on the 
sultriest island of the tropical seas or the farthest shore of the 
ice-bound North, will find it there. It is a differentiation of 
function quite necessary to the maintenance of human society. 
It is an ordinance of God. Anarchy’s wild and wicked dream 
has no standing ground in reason or reality. 

Nor can it be asserted that this order of society as higher and 
lower, ruling and ruled, is due to the imperfections of flesh and 
blood. Why should it not obtain in the most exalted spheres 
of being? For the eternal principle and source of government is 
in God himself. The Creator has supremacy over the created, 
from the lowliest to the loftiest. Who is lofty as compared with 
him? “Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth.” But it is 
God’s good pleasure to enforce mediately as well as immediately 
the doing of his will. So his authority is, in various instances, 
put forth through personal representatives: “There is no power 
[égovete, authority] but of God. . . . He [the civil ruler] 
is the minister of God to thee for good,’ May this, then, not be 
as on earth so in heaven? In fact, the Scripture representations 
of the heavenly life indicate that it is so. There are angels and 
archangels in the beatific world. There are thrones, dominions, 
principalities, authorities, powers, “invisible” as well as “visi- 
ble.’”* 

It is a beautiful story that is told by his biographer of the last 
hours of Richard Hooker. In reply to the inquiry of a confi- 
dential friend as to what had been the direction of his thoughts 
he said: “I have been meditating the number and nature of 
angels, and their blessed order and obedience, without which 
peace could not be in heaven; and oh, that it might be so on 
earth.” Hooker was a lover of law. Most reverently did he 
seek it out and set it forth. True, he had not found in his la- 
borious researches any fixed form of church government in the 


Rom. xiii. I, 4. 2Col. i. 16; 1 Pet. iii. 22, 


Oversight: Presbyter—Early Office 205 


New Testament; but there, as well as in the natural creation and 
in human history, he had found the immutable principles of gov- 
ernment as a sublime expression of the Divine Nature itself. 
That had filled his imagination and satisfied his reason with an 
indescribable joy. His erudite argument kindled into a very 
song of the heart before the vision of the universal supremacy 
of Law: “All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the 
very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted 
from her power.” Fittingly, therefore, among the last thoughts 
of the great ecclesiologist, after a troubled life, were the order 
and obedience of those higher intelligences into whose company 
he humbly hoped to be received. “Order and obedience without 
which peace could not be in heaven.” 


2. THE PRESBYTERATE AS AN EXTENSION OF PARENTHOOD. 


The earthly type of the Divine government is the family. 


_ “T bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family 


7 


(zatpia, fatherhood) in heaven and on earth is named.’”* Here 
is no democracy or republicanism, but a natural monarchy. The 
conscious relation of the child to the father and mother is the 
best analogue we know of the relation of men, women, and chil- 
dren, one and all, to the Father in heaven. 
Lo! Lord, I sit in thy wide space, 
My child upon my knee; 


She looketh up into my face, 
And I look up to thee. 


It is in the order of nature that the father and mother should 
occupy toward the child, irrespective of its own choice or action, 
a relation of authoritative supervision. Nor is this simply be- 
cause the child’s very life is from the parent. For if the parent 
should become manifestly incompetent, through imbecility or 
otherwise, to care for and govern the child, his authority ceases; 
and the State may rightly withdraw the child from his control. 
And on the other hand, an adopted child comes under the same 


7Eph. iii. 15. 


206 Christianity as Organized 


parental supervision and control as if he had been born in the 
household. It is, then, not simply the actual parenthood, but in 
addition the resources of knowledge, wisdom, character, and 
wealth represented by superior age, that places the parent in his 
authoritative relation toward the child. 

Thus we may see how naturally, through an extension of the 
parental idea, patriarchal government began. And at the same 
time a moment’s reflection will show how unnatural it would be 
to push the parental idea beyond a certain narrow range of ap- 
plication. Forcibly to embody it in the government of a people, 
in Church or State, would be to imply that such a people were 
as dependent upon their paternal autocrat for the outward ad- 
vantages and opportunities that go to make up their life as the 
child is dependent for these things upon his father and mother; 
that they are as inferior to him in intelligence, wisdom, and 
strength of character as the child is inferior to his father and 
mother; and that they are loved by him as the child is loved, 
with a personal, God-given parental affection, by the father and 
mother. It is the fact of government in human society that is 
divinely universal—not the form. 

But family government could easily enlarge its sphere so as 
to become patriarchal—children’s children and others being in- 
cluded. And it was by a somewhat similar development of the 
patriarchal idea that the first form of conciliar government arose. 
The two guiding principles were kinship and maturity of ex- 
perience. That is to say, a number of families more or less akin 
passed under the government of a council of their seniors, or 
elders. 

Now, these elders might be the rulers of an independent clan. 
Or, when monarchies were developed, and, increasing in power, 
embraced vast regions of country and various peoples within 
their dominions, the conciliar government by elders might still - 
appear, in local communities, under the general government. 
And, as a matter of fact, it has thus appeared in sundry forms 
in all ages. We read of the elders of Pharaoh’s house and of 


Oversight: Presbyter—Early Office 207 


the land of Egypt,’ the elders of Moab, the elders of Midian.’ 
A better defined example is found among the early Greeks, in 
the Spartan council of elders (yepoveia), whose members had to 
be at least sixty years of age; also among the early Romans, in 
their council of Old Men,* or Senate (senex, senatus). Of the 
same general nature was the council of family elders that pre- 
sided over the ancient Russian commune. And even in the pres- 
ent age a somewhat similar example appears in the Old Men of 
the aborigines’ villages of our own continent.“ Let the older 
men serve as rulers: the capacity to do so confers the right and 
imposes the duty.” 

Nevertheless gray hairs and wisdom are not synonymous terms. 
The poet may sing with truth of “years that bring the philo- 
sophic mind;” but it is equally true, as Photius the deacon said 
of Cyprian, that “greater progress is made by faith than by 
time,” or, as “The Wisdom of Solomon” had taught long years 
before, that “understanding is gray hairs unto men, and an un- 
spotted life is ripe old age.”” The younger may be both wiser 


*Gen. 1. 7. *Num. xxii. 7. 

“Indeed, if this great trinity of excellences [counsel, wisdom, and in- 
fluence] did not inhere in the old men, our ancestors would never have 
called their highest deliberative assembly ‘the Senate.’ Even among the 
Lacedemonians those who exercise the fullest powers are called (as they 
really are) Old Men.” (Cicero, De Senectute, c. 5.) 

“Tn all councils (as therein they are circumspect to do their actions by 
advice and counsel, and not rashly or inconsiderately) the younger men’s 
Opinions shall be heard, but the old men’s opinion and counsel embraced and 
| followed.” (Morton, “Manners and Customs of the Indians” [Old South 
| Leaflets], p. 4.) 
5A provision for constituting a legislative body partly or wholly on the 
principle of seniority may be found in American Church History of the last 
| century: “The General Conference [the one lawmaking body of the Church] 
shall be composed of one member for every five members of each Annual 
Conference, to be appointed either by seniority or choice, at the discretion 
of each Annual Conference.” (An act of the General Conference of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 1808.) The law thus enacted held its place in 
the Discipline of the Church for nearly a hundred years; though it would 
seem that no Annual Conference ever saw fit to appoint any of its delegates 
by the method of seniority. 


208 Christianity as Organized 


and stronger—better “for counsel” as well as “for war.” Hence 
the universal tendency to lower the age limit, modifying the an- 
cient order, so that the senate may come to be made up of the 
supposedly best men, whether older or younger. 

In this same line of inquiry we find that what are familiarly 
known nowadays, through the Bible and the present economy of 
Christian churches, as presbyters, or elders, were originally—that 
is to say, in the earliest Old Testament times—in the literal sense, 
elderly men; but that in later times their name no longer implies 
an advanced age, though it does imply the maturity of mind and 
character of which old age is the natural sign. 

Therefore it is most fitting that in the portraiture of the 
“bishop,” or presbyter, in 1 Timothy, a comparison should be 
made between the presbyterate in the Church and fatherhood in 
the home: the “bishop” must be ‘fone that ruleth well his own 
house, having his children in subjection with all gravity (but if 
a man knoweth not how to rule his own house, how shall he take 
care of the Church of God?).’” Nor shall we be surprised to 
learn that the presbyterate, through the ages of time and through- 
out the world, represents more generally than does any other 
office in the Church this fatherly care and authority. Preémi- 
nently it may be taken as standing for rule, discipline, order in 
the house of God. It was so in ancient Israel; it was so in the © 
Israel of our Lord’s day; it was so in the first Christian church- — 
es; it is so to a considerable extent in the churches of to-day. 
Aptly does Richard Hooker speak of “presbyters, or fatherly — 
guides.” i 

Even in the vision of the celestial kingdom given from the 
ascended Christ “unto his servant John’ elders appear, four : 
and twenty, clothed in white raiment, wearing crowns of gold © 


‘ 


on their heads, sitting on thrones round about the throne of the — 


Eternal.” 
Now, we may not be prepared, with some, to profess the faith | 
: 


that the Church is here represented ‘‘as continuing in heaven un- 


yi in oattenAs a: *Rev. iv. 4. 


Oversight: Presbyter—Early Office 209 


der the same Presbyterian form of government which had char- 
acterized her whole history on earth,’ any more than we could 
believe, with Clement of Alexandria, that “the grades here in 
the Church of bishops, presbyters, and deacons are imitations of 
the angelic glory,” or with Dionysius the Areopagite, that the 
medieval hierarchy was divinely arranged to correspond, rank 
by rank, with the hierarchy of heaven. Yet it may certainly be 
said that the celestial elders (though their title is probably non- 
official, as in Hebrews xi. 2) are a chosen symbol of wisdom and 
order in the glorified Church. 


3. In ISRAEL. 


At the very beginning of the Hebrew national history, the 
elders appear as a ruling class; for Moses is commanded to 
select Seventy of them as his assistants in the administration of 
government.” In the time of the Judges they are said to have 
gathered together and come to Samuel to ask for the appoint- 
ment of a king. Nor should we fail to notice that they came 
not for themselves but as representatives of the people: “‘And 
the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the peo- 
ple.”’* Under the reign of Josiah they are summoned by the 
king to cooperate with him, apparently, in destroying the prev- 
alent idolatry and bringing the nation to make a covenant with 
Jehovah.* 

Especially to be noted are the elders of the cities; for it was 
in the municipal government that these officers appeared most 
prominent and authoritative.” 

The elders’ office was both administrative and judicial. They 
were not, however, the only judges.” In fact, it is vain to seek 
direct and full information as to their functions, which, there 


+W. B. Arrowood, “Sermon on Polity of Presbyterian Church,” p. 21. 

?Num. xi. 16, 17. 8 Sam. viii. 4-7. 

“2 Kings xxiii. 

*Deut. xix. 12; Josh. xx. 4; Judges viii. 14, 16; Ruth iv. 2; 1 Sam. xi. 
3; xvi. 4; I Kings xxi. 8-11; Ezra x. 14. See Schiirer, “Jewish People in 
Time of Jesus Christ.” (Div. II., Vol. I., p. 150.) 

*Ezra x, 14. 


14 


210 Christianity as Organized 


is reason to believe, were not strictly defined in that primitive 
age. Neither have we any account of the method by which they 
were chosen to office. Probably the choice was more passive 
than active—by common consent without a formal election. 
Showing themselves competent to give counsel and to govern, 
they gave counsel and governed—and were obeyed. 

During the inter-biblical period, the presbyterate still holds 
its place as a feature of the internal government of the Jewish 
people,’ and not as a fossilized or decadent institution. On the 
contrary, it shows a vigorous and increasing vitality.’ _ 

Passing on to New Testament times, we shall meet with the 
elder as a still more familiar figure in Israel. For meantime the 
Great Sanhedrin, let it be remembered, has been organized in 
Jerusalem, and also the local councils, or small sanhedrins, 
throughout the land. What was now the presbyteral office? 
Essentially the same, so far as can be ascertained, that it had 
been from the beginning. For not only did the elders occupy 
seats in the Great Sanhedrin, but in those towns whose popula- 
tion was almost wholly Jewish they themselves were the goy- 
erning body. As such they composed the small, or local, san- 
hedrin—in the New Testament called, like the Great Sanhedrin, 
a “council”*—whose functions, corresponding to those of the 
ancient presbyterate, were both administrative and judicial. 


“And they called together all the elders [Tove mpecBurépouc] of the city.” 
(Judith vi. 16.) 

“And Jonathan returned [from one of his victories], and when he had 
called the elders [vote mpeoBurépovc] of the people together, he consulted 
with them,” etc. (1 Maccabees xii. 35.) 

“Since the Jews, . . . when we came to the city [Jerusalem] received 
us in a splendid manner, and came to meet us with the senate,” etc. (Letter 
of Antiochus the Great to Ptolemy, in Josephus, Ant. Bk. XII., ch. iii. 3.) 

“Undoubtedly heretofore each high priest had consulted the heads of 
families and prominent men of the community before taking important 
action, but henceforth [from the time of Antiochus the Great] they consti- 
tute an organized and recognized body, the legislative and executive powers 
of which were constantly increased.” (Kent, “History of the Jewish Peo- 
ple,” pp. 305, 306.) 

*Matt. x 17. 


Oversight: Presbyter—Early Office 211 


The office of elder must not be confounded with that of the 
“ruler of the synagogue’ (épxiovvdywyos )—or “rulers,” for it 
seems that in some cases there was but one, and in others more.” 
This was an office to which was assigned the special oversight 
of the synagogue worship, and of the building in which the 
services were held. It might be, and as a rule it probably was, 
filled by an elder; but not necessarily so. It was a different 
office. But the two were in accord and codperation with each 
other for the general well-being of the community.* The regu- 
lar meeting place of the council of elders was the synagogue; 
and on the Sabbath they were honored with seats on the plat- 
form in time of worship. The ruler of the synagogue presided, 
and the elders made a semicircle about him. Theirs were the 
“chief seats.’’* 

Not only among the Jews of the Holy Land, but also in the 
communities of the Dispersion, the prevailing form of govern- 
ment seems to have been presbyteral.* 

The elders of this time were elected by the people.” Their 
authority was firmly established and of wide range. Acting as a 
court, they could pronounce upon an offender a sentence either 
of excommunication or of corporal punishment; and in case of 
the latter the “attendant” of the synagogue® had to inflict the 
penalty. Jesus forewarned his disciples: ““They will deliver you 
up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you.” 

Here, then, to borrow the language of civics, was a strong 


*Luke xiii. 14; Mark v. 22. 

?Schiirer, “Jewish People in Time of Jesus Christ,’ Diy. II., Vol. IL. 
pp. 62-65. Hort, “The Christian Ecclesia,” pp. 65, 66. 

*Matt. xxiii. 6. 

“In the Dispersion there was a body of non-official “elders” called the 
yepovoia; its chief was called the yepovocdpync; and its committee of manage- 
ment, thedpyovres. See Schiirer, “The Jewish People in the Time of Christ,” 
Div. II., Vol. II., pp. 247-252. 

*“And absence of pride, as also gentleness and humility, are mentioned 
as special qualifications.” (Edersheim, “Life and Times of Jesus the Mes- 
siah,” Vol. I., p. 438.) Edersheim, unlike Schiirer, identifies the elders with 
the rulers of the synagogue. 

®Luke iv. 20. "Matt. x. 17, 


212 Christianity as Organized 


conciliar, or republican, form of government. Not a pure de- 
mocracy, not an aristocracy or a monarchy; but an ecclesiastic 
republicanism. Such was the Jewish presbyterate. 


4. IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 


Now, it might have reasonably been expected that, in the ab- 
sence of any word of the Lord to the contrary, a similar form 
of government would be adopted by the first Christian congre- 
gations. For these congregations were composed, either whol- 
ly or mainly, of Jews, and withal were not separatists or schis- 
matics. Even the sects of Pharisees and Sadducees were not 
schismatics; much less the so-called sect of Nazarenes. These 
claimed to be, what in fact they were, the orthodox members of 
the Church of their fathers. They were the new and true Israel. 
They called their congregations either synagogues or churches— 
though far preferably, it seems, the latter." A Christian syna- 
gogue, indeed, might be one of the old-time synagogues con- 
verted as a body to the faith of Jesus. 

It were well that the Church should think gratefully of that 
preparer of the way of the Lord, both in “his own” land and 
among the nations—the Jewish synagogue. It had pulpit with- 
out altar, preacher without priest, worship without sacrifice or 
incense, a congregational type of religion. And the same were 
features of the early Christian congregations. 

But what calls more immediately for remark is, that just as 
the simple forms of worship in the synagogue appeared, the 
same yet not the same, in the Christian congregation, so might 
it have seemed likely that the simple and effective forms of pres- 
byteral government in the Jewish community which gathered 


1Schiirer, op. cit.; “The Idea of the Church,” Part L., ch. ii. 

The word “synagogue” is used for the Christian “congregation” in Her- 
mas, “The Pastor,” Commandments, 11: “When, therefore, a man having 
the Divine Spirit comes into an assembly (ci¢ ovvaywy#) of righteous men 
who have faith in the Divine Spirit, and there is offered prayer to God hy 
this assembly (t#c¢ ovvaywyfc) of the righteous men, . . . the man, be- 
ing filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks to the multitude as the Lord wishes,” 
And so in two other passages of the chapter, 


SE 


Oversight: Presbyter—Early Office 213 


about the synagogue would appear, the same yet not the same, 
among the Christians also. And so they did. 

Accordingly the presbyterate is mentioned in the Acts and the 
Epistles rather as a matter of course than as if it were a new 
institution. We have no such account of its origin, for exam- 
ple, as is given of the appointment of the Seven.” We simply 
read that the Christians of Antioch, providing relief for the 
needy Christians in Jerusalem, “‘sent it to the elders by the hands 
of Barnabas and Saul;’” that these same two apostles appointed 
elders in every church which they had gathered in Asia Minor,® 
that Paul “sent to Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the 
Church;’* and so on. The presbyterate of the Jewish-Christian 
congregations, then, was not an actually new institution. 

And now another step. As Gentiles were won to Christian 
discipleship, from time to time, and brought together in churches 
of their own race, wholly or predominantly, they would not un- 
naturally follow the example of church order set forth by their 
Jewish brethren. But, in addition to this, they were accustomed 
to government by elders in their own communities. For the gov- 
ernment of the Greco-Roman cities, as well as that of the nu- 
merous political and religious societies in these cities, was of 
this character.” Thus two classes of examples, Jewish and 
Greco-Roman, were exerting their influence in the same direc- 
tion upon the organization of the Gentile churches. And it was 
a natural consequence that they too should become presbyteral 
societies. 

One is not to assume, however, that this form of government 
was everywhere prevalent from the first. For example, nothing 
is said in the New Testament about elders in the church at Anti- 
och, though the “disciples,” “the church,” and “‘the brethren” are 
spoken of more than once. And the same is true of the church 
at Corinth and at Rome. 


4Acts vi. 1-6. ?Acts xi. 30. SActs xiv. 23. *Acts aoe 17. 
®Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” pp. 62, 63; Lindsay, 
“The Church and the Ministry,” p. 154. 


VIL. 


THE PRESBYTER: HIS LATER AND PRESENT 
OFFICE. 


Ir what we have thus far learned is trustworthy, we are not 
to conceive of the presbyterate any more than of the diaconate 
or of any other office as instituted by some apostolic mandate. 
It came from within, not from without. It was provided, as 
the need made itself felt, which in some circumstances would be 
sooner than in others. 

Everywhere, in fact, there may be seen a close affinity be- 
tween social need and office—an affinity which is suggested by 
the use of the same Greek word (xpe‘a2) for both ideas, the need 
and the office to which it gives rise." 

What was the number of presbyters in each Christian con- 
gregation, or whether there was any required or customary num- 
ber, we do not know. In the local sanhedrin the number varied 
within certain limits—probably from seven to twenty-three’-— 
according to the size of the congregation; and it may be that a 
similar rule obtained in the churches. 

As to the official duties of the presbyter (or bishop), the New 
Testament answer may be given in few words: First, as stated 
in general, to oversee and take care of the congregation, to 
teach, if he could;* to help the weak; to rule’-—not to overrule, 
but to be himself what he required others to become;* to exhort 
and to convince gainsayers;’ to minister to the sick;* secondly, 
as illustrated in particular instances, to take charge of money 
contributed for the relief of the poor ;’ conjointly with the Apos- 
tles to decide urgent disciplinary questions;° together with an 


4Acts iv. 35; Vi. 3. 
2Schiirer, “History of Jewish People,” Div. Il., Vol. L, pp. 151-154. 


*Acts xx. 28; 1 Tim. iii. 5. "Titus i. 9. 

“1 Tim. ili. 2; v. 17. ’James vy. 14. 
®Acts xx. 35. *Acts xi. 29, 30. 
Sr Pete eias 1°Acts xv. 23-20. 


(214) 


-Presbyter: Later Office 215 


Apostle, to set persons apart with laying on of hands for some 
Christian ministry." 

But observe, there was not one of these functions but might 
be performed by some other minister of the Church—Apostle, 
teacher, deacon—or by Christian people generally. 

The presbyters, then, were the chief local officers in a Chris- 
tian society, as in the contemporary Jewish communities, of the 
apostolic period. Whatever was meant by ecclesiastical order, 
or, more specifically, whatever was meant by representative su- 
pervision and authority over a church, that is what they stood 
for. Over a church, let it be noted; not over the Church, or 
over a number of churches. For there is no satisfactory ev- 
idence that the Christian elders’ jurisdiction extended, any 
more than did that of the elders of the local Jewish councils, 
beyond the single congregation which they were appointed to 
serve. 

But we must now pass from the congregations of the New 
Testament period to their successors, and on to the present day. 


I. PRESBYTERS AS JUDGES AND ADMINISTRATORS. 


In the sub-apostolic age (say, 100-150) a very conspicuous 
function of the presbyters was that of judges and administrators 
of the law. They had, indeed, various administrative duties: 
the oversight of congregational worship, the direction of 
finances, the care of the sick and the poor,” the administration 


_ of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And in some instances, per- 


haps generally, they were teachers or preachers. 
But most prominent were their judicial and disciplinary func- 


' tions. The Church was the Christians’ tribunal: their causes 


Pr Tim. iv. 14. 

"For this ministration was not wholly turned over to the deacon—even 
as it is not by the elder of a Presbyterian or a Baptist church of to-day: 
“And let the presbyters be compassionate and merciful to all, bringing back 
those that wander, visiting all the sick, and not neglecting the widow, the 


| orphan, or the poor.” (Polycarp, “To the Philippians,” 6.) 


216 Christianity as Organized 


must not be litigated in heathen courts." But especially must 
strict discipline be maintained. The Bride of Christ is to keep 
herself unspotted from the world. Christian morality is to be 
emphasized even more than definite theological knowledge and 
belief. Hence the presbyter was very prominently a judge and 
administrator of the law. 

Our familiar idea of the care of a church is that of a pastor 
preaching and teaching Sunday after Sunday, making pastoral 
visitations, and administering discipline—the last being the least. 
But it would be quite amiss to date this twentieth century picture 
in the sub-apostolic age. True, all the features of it may be 
found there; but with the proportions markedly different. The 
presbyter-pastors—note the plural number—of a church in those 
early days were, first of all, literally rectors. 

And we shall find the same thing to be more distinctly true 
of the single-presbyter, or single-bishop, pastor, when he appears, 
There is evidence of this, for example, in what may be called 
the first book on pastoral theology ever written—in the “Pastoral 
Rule” (Regula Pastoralis) of Gregory the Great (d. 604). 
Gregory, it is true, compares the pastor to a physician, and has 
much to say of him as a teacher; but the idea of rulership in 
connection with his office—as expressed in such words as 
“ruler,” “supreme rule,” “weight of government,” “care of goy- 
ernment,” “dominion,” “pastoral authority,” “place of rule,” “em- 
inent dominion’”—is ever present with a prominence and per- 
sistence quite unknown to the pastoral theology with which we 
in our day are familiar. 

But here let us be careful to take note of an important dis- 
tinction.. The Christian eldership was not wholly the same as 
the Jewish eldership. It was not even nearly the same. For 
example, the Jewish council of elders had control of municipal 


99 66 


*t Cor. vi. I. 
“Let not those who have disputes go to law before the civil powers, but 


let them by all means be reconciled by the elders of the Church, and let .— 


them readily yield to their decision.” (“The Clementines,’ Clement to 
James, 10.) 


lt Fat 


Presbyter: Later Office 217 


4s well as of ecclesiastical affairs; the Christian elders, of eccle- 
siastical affairs only. Again, the Jewish council of elders sat as 
a complete and independent court, deciding cases of discipline, 
condemning the guilty, and administering suitable punishment, 
with no cooperation on the part of the people. And the same 
is true of the session of elders in Presbyterian churches of the 
present day. But it is not certain that the early Christian elders 
were clothed with such exclusive prerogatives. In some of their 
meetings, at least, whether for discipline or for other purposes, 
the people seem to have consulted and voted with them.” It may 
well be, indeed, that in many cases the congregation would 
leave these matters to the elders’ decision—not caring to share 
their responsibility, though perhaps present at the meeting.” But 
there is evidence of the recognized right of the congregation to 
take part in the consideration and decision of disciplinary cases. 
Even as late as the close of the second century Tertullian writes: 
“Tt is a very grave forestalling of the judgment to come, if any 
have so offended as to be put out of the communion of prayer, 
of the solemn assembly, and of all holy fellowship. The most 
approved elders preside.’ 

For the Christian presbyterate, like the other Christian insti- 
tutions, had an innate formative idea. It was no mere copyist. 
It filled with its own life, and thus molded for its own purpose, 
whatever it may have taken from an existing office. Thus, then, 
it showed itself, especially in the first and purer period of church 
history, to be more democratic than the Jewish presbyterate. It 
would admit the people to a larger share in government. 

And not only so; it was also much more pastoral in its spirit 
and work—teaching, exhorting, ministering to the sick, helping 
the poor, shepherding the flock of Christ. Hardly could a Jew- 
ish council have made a like-minded response to such an appeal 


as that of the great Apostle to the elders of the church in Ephe- 


sus: “Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, in the which 
the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops, to feed the Church of 


PINGS AO, 2,022) 2Acts xxi. 17, 18. ®Apology, 39. 


218 Christianity as Organized 


God, which he purchased with his own blood. . . . Where- 
fore, watch ye, remembering that by the space of three years I 
ceased not to admonish every one night and day with tears. 

In all things I gave you an example, how that so labor- 
ing ye ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of 
the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It is more blessed to give 
than to receive.’”* An elder of the Jews, a Christian pastor— 
the two were far from being identical. 

A side light falls upon this point from the forms of worship 
in the synagogue and in the Church. We have already seen that 
these forms were the same, yet not the same. In fact, they were 
inwardly very different, and hence more or less different out- 
wardly. Compare the Scripture-reading, the exposition, the 
formal prayers, the chanting by the precentor of one of the 
few prescribed Psalms with the congregational response of “Hal- 
leluiah” or ‘Amen and Amen,” of the ancient Jewish assembly, 
with the reading of the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the let- 
ters of Apostles, the prophetic speech and interpretation, the 
spontaneous outbursts of fervent prayer, the joyousness, the 
singing one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, 
of the primitive Christian congregation. It was the difference 
between the Oriental lamp and the electric bulb, between the vo- 
cabulary of prose and of poetry, between routine and inspira- 
tion. And similar was the difference between presbyteral over- 
sight in a Jewish community and in a Christian church. 

But so far as the concurrence or cooperation of the people 
with the presbyters of the Church was concerned, this came to 
be regarded as of less and less value, through the encroachment 
of hierarchic ideas, till it was no longer sought or even per- 
mitted. 


2. THE PRESIDING PRESBYTER, OR BISHOP. 


We shall have to remark, further, that just as the presbyter- 
pastors tended to release themselves from the codperation of the 


*Acts xx. 28-35. 
*“The Jewish Encyclopedia,” Articles on Synagogue and Psalms, 


Presbyter: Later Office 219 


congregation and act independently, so the presiding presbyter- 
pastor, who came to be known by the exclusive title of bishop, 
tended to rise above his fellow-presbyters and concentrate in his 
own person the functions which he and they had formerly exer- 
cised in common. Thus the bishop was not only made the su- 
preme ruler of the congregation, but he also began to be looked 
upon as the most proper person to administer baptism and the 
Lord’s Supper and to preach. Others must not, except in his 
absence and with his permission, perform these functions. Also, 
while the presbytery were still his council, he did not hesitate to 
act at times in his own name." 

We are not to suppose, however, that this concentration in the 
presiding presbyter, or bishop, of the functions formerly exer- 
cised equally by all presbyters implied any inherent difference 
between the two officers. It was not a law laid down by Chirst 
or his Apostles, but purely a matter of order and expediency. 
It was in virtue of his pastorship of the congregation that others 
within his jurisdiction must be restrained from the performance 
of official ministerial acts without his permission. The regula- 
tion was not essentially different from what may be seen in cer- 
tain Christian pastorates of the present day.” 


*For a fuller view of this transition see pp. 232 ff. 

*“Tt was not fit or just that any one should preach or govern in a parish 
without the permission of the bishop, or pastor, thereof; . . . for though 
a presbyter by his ordination had as ample an inherent right to discharge 
all clerical offices as any bishop in the world had, yet peace, unity, and order 
obliged him not to invade that part of God’s Church which was committed 
to another man’s care, without that man’s approbation and consent.” (Lord 
King, “Inquiry into the Primitive Church” (1841), p. 64.) 

Cf. the regulations on this subject in some present-day churches: “Any 
traveling or local preacher or layman who shall hold public religious services 
within the bounds of any mission, circuit, or station, when requested by the 
preacher in charge not to do so, shall be deemed guilty of imprudent con- 
duct, and shall be dealt with as the law provides in such cases.” (“Discipline 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South” (1906), Par. 306.) 

For the first few years of its history the Methodist Episcopal Church 
gave its preachers in charge sole i agra to expel unruly or immoral mem- 
bers of the Church. 


220 Christianity as Organized 


On the other hand, the rise of diocesan episcopacy, about the 
beginning of the third century, strengthened the presbyterate. 
For, as new congregations were formed round the mother 
church, and presbyters were appointed as their pastors, these 
presbyters in charge occupied very nearly the same position in 
their respective charges as the congregational bishop had occu- 
pied in his. They could baptize; they could celebrate the Lord’s 
Supper; and preaching came to be recognized, at least in the 
West, as a function of the presbyters as well as of the bishop. 
In a word, the simple presbyter now became the sole immediate 
pastor of a congregation—a position which he had never before 
occupied. 

Here for a few moments it may be worth while to pause and 
note more particularly the significance of one of these functions. 
Regularly, in his own congregation, without any special permis- 
sion of the bishop, the presbyter could now administer the Lord’s 
Supper. A simple minor matter, was it? On the contrary, it 
was a change in ecclesiastical order that has been described as a 
“revolution—if anything in the gradual development of church 
organization may be called revolutionary.’” As will be seen in 
the next chapter, the presidency of the Lord’s Supper had helped 
greatly to fix the status of the bishop; it now helps in like man- 
ner to fix the status of the presbyter. To preside at the table of 
the Lord—that of itself was sufficient to impart a distinct worth 
and dignity to the presbyter’s office. And it is a function that 
he has retained ever since. 

For a time the presbyters in charge were held as members 
of the bishop’s council, to aid in governing his group of churches 
—namely, the congregation of which he was still the immediate 
pastor, and their congregations, of which he was now the gen- 
eral superintendent. But in point of fact they probably did much 
less service than heretofore as councilors; and in course of time 
their place came to be filled by a body of presbyters and deacons 
known as canons. Thus the presbyters in charge were still fur- 


1Lowrie, “The Church and Its Organizations,” p. 297. 


«a <a 


Presbyter: Later Office 221 


ther detached from the bishop and strengthened in their inde- 
pendent position. 


3. PRESBYTER PERVERTED INTO PRIEST. 


But above all did the sacerdotal idea, which had become 
strongly influential by the middle of the third century, increase 
the power of the presbyter. For it clothed him as such with 
the prerogative of official mediation between God and man. 
Henceforth he stood at an altar and professed to offer up the 
body and blood of Christ for the sins of the world. This was 
now the presbyter’s profession of authority and power; and as 
time went on, it increased unto still greater hierarchic perversion 
of his office and ministry. To him as confessor must the penitent 
come to be released from his sins. Eternal life and death, in 
any individual case, depended upon words which he claimed, in 
his capacity of priest, to be empowered to speak. It was hardly 
possible that the difference of order between layman and presby- 
ter should ever be wider than it had now become.” 

Accordingly the Roman Church has never declared that there 
is any higher Holy Order than the priesthood. The bishop and 
even the pope claim to be higher in order of dignity and power 
of office only... The priesthood is one, because there can be 


*Note the incommensurable power of presbyter and of deacon in Jerome: 
“T am told that some one has been mad enough to put deacons before pres- 
byters—that is, before bishops. For while the apostle clearly enough teaches 
that presbyters are the same as bishops, must not a mere server of tables 
and of widows be insane to set himself up arrogantly over men through 
whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are produced?” (“To Evan- 
gelus,” 1.) 

2“The power of consecrating and offering the body and blood of our 
Lord and of remitting sin is such as cannot be comprehended by the human 
mind, still less is it equaled by, or assimilated to, anything on earth. 

“The power with which the Christian priesthood is clothed is a heavenly 
power, raised above that of angels.” (Donovan, “Catechism of the Council 
of Trent,” On the Sacrament of Orders, pp. 212, 215.) 

*Jt must be admitted, however, that the motive has not always seemed to 
be doctrinal or historic conviction. In the great determinative case, at least, 
it seemed to have been papal policy. That is to say, it was through this influ- 
ence that the Council of Trent refused to “declare, pronounce, and define” that 


222 Christianity as Organized 


nothing essentially greater—the priest at the altar being a daily 
miracle-worker, the most stupendous that ever trod the earth.’ 

Henceforth, then, through the Middle Ages and in the Eastern 
and Roman Churches of the modern age, we are to think of the 
presbyter as claiming priesthood and appearing always in that 
character. With entire appropriateness the New Testament title 
of presbyter has been pushed aside, because it no longer sug- 
gests, much less contains, the essential feature of the office. A 
new office, come from without, has taken the place of the old. 
A new officer has arisen. Priest, offerer of sacrifice—that is the 
word which overshadows the significance of all other appella- 
tions by which he may be known. 


4. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARCH-PRESBYTERATE, 


A presbyteral development that cannot be condemned as a per- 
version was the arch-presbyterate. This office appears in two 
different forms, whose origins are separated by a distance of 
four centuries. First, it was an office for the city. Here the 
arch-presbyter, who was usually, though not necessarily, the 
senior member of his presbytery, exercised a certain authority 
delegated to him by the bishop, over his fellow-presbyters of 


bishops held their office jure divino. It was urged by many bishops to do so. 
But the pope through his legate persistently and most skillfully opposed such 
action. He was afraid of the bishops. Had they not in the Council of Con- 
stance declared that the pope himself was subject to the General Council? 
Were they not now in very many instances—the Spanish bishops, e. g., as 
a body—restless under their oath of allegiance to him, claiming that they 
held their office immediately under Christ (jure divino), and not imme- 
diately under the pope (lege ecclesiastica). This would never do. Already 
the bishops were dangerous to the pope’s supremacy; and if the Council 
should make their office jure divino, their power to resist papal authority 
would be greatly increased. So, apparently with this motive, it was not 
done. 

1“The turning of the host into God was so great an action that they [the 
schoolmen] reckoned there could be no office higher than that which qualified 
a man to so mighty a performance; . . . so they raised their order or 
office so high as to make it equal with the order of bishop.” (Burnet, “His- 
tory of the Reformation of the Church of England,” Vol. I, Addenda, ad. 
pag. 400.) 


Presbyter: Later Office 223 


the bishop’s council. His main function, however, seems to 
have been to take charge of congregational worship, and to ad- 
minister baptism, on occasion of the bishop’s absence. Also, in 
case of a vacancy in the episcopal see, the arch-presbyter was 
entitled to perform the functions of a bishop—with the very prob- 
able exception of ordination. His position foreshadowed that of 
the dean of a medieval and a modern cathedral. 

But there also arose a rural arch-presbyter. This develop- 
ment did not occur till the eighth and ninth centuries, and was 
confined to Western Europe. It was occasioned by circumstances 
peculiar to that region. In certain pretty wide districts there 
would be but one church in which the rites of baptism and the 
Lord’s Supper might be administered. But in addition to this 
principal church, here and there were chapels, or oratories, in 
which only a service of prayer was conducted. Each of these 
chapels was presided over by a presbyter, or perhaps by a deacon, 
or perhaps even by a member of some minor order of the clergy. 
Now the presbyter-pastor of the principal, or baptismal, church 
had a certain oversight of the chapels, or non-baptismal church- 
es, and accordingly received the title of arch-presbyter. And 
even when after a time these chapels became baptismal churches, 
in which the sacraments might be administered, the jurisdiction 
of the arch-presbyter over them was kept up. Thus originated 
the rural arch-presbyterate. 

The office was similar to that of the rural dean in the Church 
of England—an officer who represents the bishop in executing 
official writs and in taking oversight of morals and manners in 
the district assigned him. 

Another, and in our country much more familiar type, of the 
arch-presbyterate is the presiding eldership—or “district super- 
intendency”—of the Methodist Episcopal Churches. Here is an 
office of presbyteral supervision that began with the organization 
of Methodism as a church in America. An elder is appointed 
to preside over his fellow-elders and other preachers within a 
certain prescribed district—in most instances chiefly or wholly 
in the country. To hold quarterly conferences in the various 


224 Christianity as Organized 


pastoral charges, to supply churches with pastors, to direct can- 
didates for the ministry to their studies, to see that discipline is 
enforced, to “preach, and to oversee the temporal and spiritual 
affairs of the Church’—such are the chief functions of this arch- 
presbyter in American Christianity. 


5. THE ScRIPTURAL PRESBYTERATE OF To-Day. 


At the present time the scriptural form of the presbyterate is 
best represented, as might be imagined, by the Christian com- 
munions of the Presbyterian order—such as the Church of Scot- 
land, the Reformed Churches of the Continent and of America, 
and the Presbyterian Churches of Great Britain and America. 
These churches have divided the presbyterate into two offices— 
namely, that of both teaching and ruling and that of ruling only. 
The former may be classed as a clerical and the latter as a lay 
office. So there are ministers, or “teaching elders,” and lay rul- 
ers, or “ruling elders.” And the government of the Church 
rests wholly in the hands of these two classes of presbyters. 

This system dates from the time of the Reformation, and 
bears the stamp of that prince of system-builders, John Calvin. 
For Calvin’s genius was notably the genius of order. Was he 
needed by his age? could it be said to him, as Ignatius wrote to 
Polycarp, “The times call for thee as do pilots for the winds?” 
Most unhappy have been the effects of that compact system of 
doctrine in which he gave logical form to his conception of 
theism and the evangelic faith. For “the mistakes of the great 
are calamities.”” But in the one respect with which we are con- 
cerned in the present study, Calvin was both greatly needed and 
greatly successful. He actualized the best thought of his age 
and of subsequent generations, as an organizer, no less truly than 
did Martin Luther as a witness for religious thinking, experience, 
and freedom. 

For the Reformation was not a wild rebellion. Had it been 
such, it would soon have broken itself to pieces and been swept 
away. There was no lawless element in it. “Under law to 
Christ” was its principle of procedure. The Reformers would 


Presbyter: Later Office 225 


do nothing against the truth of authority but everything for that 
truth. They realized that to cast off the yoke of Rome, intolera- 
ble as that yoke had been, was a perilous undertaking. For 
might it not make an opportunity for license, born of self-will, 
to simulate liberty, the child of law? 

It actually did make such an opportunity. Through its abuse 
a way was opened for the wildest vagaries of the mind as well as 
the sanest convictions and the deepest intuitions, for the baser 
as well as the nobler passions. The new liberty was made an 
“occasion to the flesh” as well as an open door to service in love. 
There were outbreaks of both social and religious fanaticism, 
agitators who were agitators only, ““Zwickau prophets,” the War 
of the Nobles, the War of the Peasants, a throwing off of the 
restraints of law both human and divine. What wonder if it 
should awaken doubt and fear in the order-loving heart? “The 
aspect of Germany,” said Luther, “has never been more pitiful 
than it is now.” 

But the point to be accentuated is that this violation of law 
and order was no proper part of the reformatory movement. It 
went dead against the will and teaching of the great Protestant 
leaders. It was such a turbulence as may be expected to attend 
for a time the breaking up of an old order and the attempt to in- 
troduce and maintain a new. Let England in the reign of Ed- 
ward VI. and America after the War of the Revolution bear 
witness. There will be temporary evil when one’s house is torn 
down before the constructive work can be done upon the house 
that is to take its place. As promptly as possible, therefore, the 
Reformation must indeed re-form the Church, the house of re- 
ligion. It must give it, among other things, a symmetrical, 
strong, and rightly constituted government. And this the pres- 
byteral system promised. 

Calvin could bear no haziness in his thinking—as unlike as 
possible the group of theologians described by Milton, who rea- 
soned and argued on foreknowledge, fate, and the like high 
themes, 

And found no end, in wandering mazes lost, 


[5 : 


226 Christianity as Organized 


Calvin, even as a young and immature theologian, “found an 
end.”” He mapped out the whole course of his thought. Hence 
we do not find him indulging in mere verbalisms, nor making an 
idol of phrases, nor satisfying himself with throwing out vague 
and symbolic words at his objects of research. All must be ex- 
act, well adjusted, unified—every nebula resolved into its con- 
stituent stars or else disregarded. Thus the Visible Catholic 
Church became to Calvin a clearly defined conception, and he 
would have it organized after a clearly defined pattern. He 
made much of church membership and discipline. Outside the 
Church there was no salvation;* inside there must be systematic 
supervision and enforced authority. The true Church might 
be known by its scriptural “notes,’’ and though here and there 
“enveloped in some cloud of ignorance,” and liable to err on non- 
essential points, was infallible “in things essential to salvation.’” 
When it spoke there was nothing left for its member but to obey. 
As to the weight of emphasis upon this obedience, there is scarce- 
ly an appreciable difference between Calvin and Rome. A very 
narrow margin, it must be admitted, was left for “the freedom 
of the Christian man.” 

The model for his system of government, considered simply 
as an authoritative presbyteral supervision, Calvin found in the 
Scriptures. The additions thereto, with the animating “aris- 
tocratic” or legal spirit, were his own. Though Calvin would 
have added nothing except under what he fully believed to be 
due warrant of the Old or the New Testament. He would have 
died first. 

Thus, through Calvin and his followers, there has been re- 
stored to the Church a ruling presbyterate, which, tenacious of 
its fundamental principles yet free to modify its forms, has wit- 
nessed well through generations and centuries for righteousness, 
order, and good government. 

Presbytery is reverent, loyal, self-possessed. It would bow 
the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one King in Zion, whose 


*Institutes, IV., i. 4. *Institutes, IV., viii. 13. 


Presbyter: Later Office 227 


unshared dominion endures forever. It would oppose the least 
encroachment of sacerdotal delusion and tyranny—though not 
successful at all times in keeping itself clear of tyrannical ex- 
actions. Through its representative courts it would guard the 
rights of the people, while at the same time avoiding the uncer- 
tainties of a pure democracy. 

' Jt has sometimes made alliance with the State—as, for in- 
stance, in Switzerland and Scotland—which can be but poorly 
reconciled with its continual confession of Christ’s sole headship 
of the Church; but the direction of its influence upon civil gov- 
ernment, on both sides of the Atlantic, has been uniformly to- 
ward authority without tyranny and liberty without license. The 
roll of its witnesses for religious freedom is long and brilliant. 


In almost all the other Protestant Christian communions, the 
presbyterate is a purely clerical office. The lay element in the 
Church’s government is introduced in other forms than that of 
the “ruling elder.” There is only the “teaching elder,” who, how- 
ever, as in Presbyterianism, is also a ruler—the fully authorized 
preacher in the pulpit, administrator of the sacraments, pastor 
of the people, presiding officer of the church. 


VIII. 


UNITY: THE BISHOP—EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF 
HIS, OFFICE: 


In the presbyter we have met with the universal represent- 
ative of church order. We are now to study one of the im- 
plications of this order—namely, unity, as exemplified in the 
office which most perfectly sets it forth. 

In fact, order of all kinds implies unity, and is in its ultimate 
idea personal. Things that are arranged—be they bricks in a 
wall, dishes on a dinner table, or words in a sentence—are ar- 
ranged according to some principle and by some person. They 
must take their places under this unitary control, else there will 
be confusion and conflict. 

The striving of all philosophic minds is toward the One. All 
the way along, from the dawn of speculative inquiry to the pres- 
ent time, this has been the line of interpretative thought con- 
cerning the universe. Its outcome is theistic. Only in the Eter- 
nal Reason can the restless human reason find rest. 

If, then, God is one and has made all things to have oneness 
in himself, it is not difficult to understand why man, in his mul- 
tifarious doings, should, consciously or unconsciously, be guided 
by a similar principle of unity. For is he not made in God’s 
image, and intended to do the works of his Father? It was the 
perfect Son, in whom the Father was well pleased, who said: 
“The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Fa- 
ther doing, . . . for the Father loveth the Son, and show- 
eth him all things that himself doeth.”* But something of what 
he himself doeth the heavenly Father shows to every man. “Be 
ye imitators of God as beloved children.” To do this volun- 
tarily and in the highest things is human perfection; for it is to 
“walk in love, even as Christ also loved.”” To do it uncon- 


1John v. 19, 20. “Eph: veel, 2) 


(228) 


Unity: Bishop—Early Development 229 


sciously and in the lower spheres of action is a human neces- 
sity. 

Accordingly we find men, taught of God, following after unity 
in all their undertakings, practical, artistic, intellectual. To 
build a dwelling house is to gather all its diverse materials and 
component parts about the one commanding idea of occupancy 
by a family. To paint a picture is to subject all the forms and 
colors that are put upon the canvass to the one ruling concep- 
tion, whatever it may be, in the artist’s mind. Similarly in any 
work of utility, of art, or of thought, the mind, while pleased 
indeed at variety, is offended at disorder. Instinctively it feels 
after the unifying idea. 


I. THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY IN SOCIETIES—IN THE CHURCH. 


It is thoroughly rational, therefore, that in those greatest and 
most powerful of human creations, the various societies that 
men form among themselves, some principle of unity should be 
followed. It is followed, as a matter of fact, in every instance 
—from that of the feeblest sorority to that of the mightiest 
world power. And it will take form most probably in a single 
personal representative. When we speak of a nation as the 
“Dody politic,” it is a very significant term that is used. In an 
animal body the members are very far from being all on the 
same level of authority and power; the arm, for instance, con- 
trols the fingers and can put them where it will. But the head, 
which is the seat of the brain, which is the throne of the soul, 
controls all: in the head the whole body is unified. And in like 
manner a nation, whatever its forms of legislation or adminis- 
tration, finds its external, representative unity in its one supreme 
ruler. Hence the tremendous power which it often permits, or 
even requires, him to wield. What is the President of the United 
States? Probably neither a soldier nor a sailor. Yet in time of 
war he is made commander in chief of both army and navy. 
One is better than many—a single headship is what the nation 
calls for. 


230 Christianity as Organized 


It is so, too, with similar bodies of men, such as municipal or 
industrial or social organizations. It is so in a school—one prin- 
cipal; and in a Sunday school—one superintendent. It was so 
in the Greco-Roman cities, when the first Christian congrega- 
tions were gathered there." It is so even in such organizations 
as are formed for a temporary purpose or a single occasion. Any 
public meeting called for the transaction of important business 
will begin by the election of a chairman. A committee will do 
the same. A jury of twelve freemen and peers will choose a 
foreman. 

Now the application of this principle to the subject in hand 
is quite obvious. Unquestionably organized Christianity will 
ever find its unifying truth in the one Lord Jesus Christ. That 
of which we have now to take note is of infinitely smaller im- 
port, and yet not lacking in interest. It is the minor and visible 
unity of a single Christian congregation. 

Any organized local church will call for a presiding officer. 
No prophetic insight would be necessary to predict this result. 
Whether more than one church, whether all churches the world 
over, shall be united under a single officer, or under a general 
government in any form, is a similar question, but not the same. 
It is analogous to the question as to how many nations, or how 
many industrial, or educational, or literary societies, shall be 
thus united. It may come up for some consideration later. 
What we have now to think of is the local congregation. 

But let us not expect to see this principle illustrated to any 
notable extent in the New Testament churches, because their 
organic development as yet was incomplete. So, for the most 


“Whether we look at the municipal councils, at the private associations, 
religious and secular, with which the East was honeycombed, at the pro- 
vincial assemblies, at the boards of magistrates, at the administrative coun- 
cils of the Jews both in Palestine and in the countries of the Dispersion, or 
at the committees of the municipal councils whose members sometimes bore, 
in common with the Christian and the Jewish councils, the name of elders 
(mpeoBirepor), we find in every case evidence of a presiding officer.” (Hatch, 
“Organization of the Early Christian Churches,” p. 85.) 


Unity: Bishop—Early Developmeiit 231 


part, they do not seem to have attained unto a single personal 
headship, but were supervised by a council of coequal presbytérs. 
In Jerusalem, indeed, it was not altogether so; for James, the x 
brother of our Lord, was recognized there as standing in some 
relation of headship to the church.’ In certain other cases, it 
may be, the need of a president would be supplied by the over- 
sight of an Apostle, or of an apostolic delegate.” The Corin- 
thians, for example, would have no occasion to choose another 
chief pastor during the year and a half that Paul, their apostolic 
founder, spent among them. Even in time of absence he could 
be “present” with them still by letters and messages, and “in 
‘spirit.”” But there can be no doubt that, generally speaking, the 
highest officers in the churches of the first two generations of 
Christians were a number of coordinate presbyters. 

Passing now into the sub-apostolic age, we find the same thing 
to be true. Not the slightest hint is given, either by Clement of 
Rome or by the Didache or by the “Pastor” of Hermas or by 
Polycarp, of a single episcopate, or pastorate. “The Apostles,” 
says Clement, “appointed the first fruits of their labors to be 
bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe ;” 
and the presbyters in the church at Corinth he classes with these 
“bishops.”* ‘Appoint for yourselves,” says the Didache, “bish- 
ops and deacons.”” “The old woman [the Church] came and 
asked me,”’ says Hermas, “if I had given the book to the pres- 
PymecoMiei ds and) then she said: )) 0h But you will) read 
the words in this city, along with the presbyters who preside over 


Acts xxi. 18; Gal. ii. 9, 12. 

There is no reason to believe that James exercised any prelatic powers. 
The evidence shows him to have been a presiding officer, but nothing more. 
When the Antiochians had made up their contribution to the church in 
Jerusalem, they sent it by the hand of Barnabas and Saul not to James but 
“to the elders.’ (Acts xi. 30.) And when they were in doubt as to the 
conditions on which to receive Gentile converts into the Church, they sent 
their deputation “to Jerusalem, unto the Apostles and elders about this ques- 
tion’—James being a member of the council. (Acts xv. 2.) 

Si slams sis) itusets: 4“To Corinthians,” 42, 44. 

=r) Cor vi 5Didache, 15. 


232 . Christianity as Organized 


the Church.” ‘Wherefore,’ says Polycarp to the church at 
Philippi, “it is needful to abstain from all these things, being 
subject to the presbyters and deacons’’”’—the same two classes 
of officers addressed by the Apostle, about forty years before, 
in his letter to this same Philippian church.* Certainly with re- 
spect to the churches represented by these several writings the 
proof of a plural overseership is as clear and concurrent as 
could be asked for any such historic fact. ; 


2. BEGINNINGS OF THE SINGLE CONGREGATIONAL. EPISCOPATE. 


But before the close of this period (say, 150 A.D.) there is a 
new development to be noted. Indications and evidences of a 
single congregational bishop appear. Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165), 
describing the observance of the Lord’s Supper, says: “The pres- 
ident in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, . 
and what is collected is deposited with the president.”* This 
president of the meeting was perhaps in a larger sense president 
of the congregation. 

And in the recently published “Sources of the Apostolic 
Canons’’—supposed to represent certain localities toward the 
close of the second century—we come upon direct evidence of 
the same office. The qualifications of the bishop are described. 
Even a very small congregation is to have its bishop (pastor )— 
as in our own day. He is to be chosen by the “competent” 
votets of the congregation; and if there be not as many as twelve 
such voters, the neighboring churches are to be written to and 
asked to send three selected men to assist in the examination of 
the brother proposed for the episcopal, or pastoral, office.” What 
now are the bishop’s functions? His place is at the altar, as 
leader of the congregational worship; and the offerings of the 


Vis. II. 4. 2“To Philippians,” 5. 

“The blessed and glorified Paul, . . . when absent from you, he 
wrote you a letter.’ (“To Philippians,” 3.) 

“First Apol., 67. 

®“Sources of Apostolic Canons,” A. 1. (Edited by Harnack, E. T., pp. 
7-10.) 


Unity: Bishop—Early Development 233 


people are placed in his hands for distribution.* And it would 
seem that he is to be the chief representative of the church to 
outsiders—at any rate, one of his required qualifications is 
that he shall have “a good report among the heathen.”* But 
the real rulers of the congregation are the presbyters. They are 
to see that order is observed in the meeting,” to them the widows 
are to report, and they even exercise a supervision over the 
bishop’s action in the distribution of the offerings.” 

Here, then, is an interesting and valuable bit of information. 
A single bishop presiding in the congregation, distributing the 
gifts, representing the church to the outside world; yet with the 
whole congregation, himself included, under the supervision of 
the presbyters. It is a transitional step toward the monarchical, 
or independent, congregational episcopate—as advocated by Ig- 
natius of Antioch. 


3. COMPLETER DEVELOPMENT OF THIS EPISCOPATE. 


Let us then open the Epistles of Ignatius. At once a very 
different picture from any we have yet seen is put upon the can- 
vass. Three separate and distinct orders, or offices, are recog- 
- nized in the ministry of all the churches, with one exception 
(significantly, the Church of Rome), to which these letters are 
sent—namely, that of deacons, of presbyters, of bishop. All 
these are to be honored as institutions of God; and the pre- 
dominant divine idea for which the bishop stands is that of 
unity. 


1“Sources of Apostolic Canons,” A. 2. *ibid., A. 2. 
slots, A. 1. *Tbid., A. 5. 
5Tbid., A. 2. 


“Thus may it be paraphrased: “The presbyters are to provide for the 
bishop at the table of gifts, in order that they may distribute the gifts (to 
the various persons needing them and entitled to them), and themselves 
teceive the necessary contributions (that is, as far as it is necessary). It is 
consequently a question of a kind of control by the presbyters over the 
management of the gifts by the bishop, in order that everything may be done 
orderly.” (Jbid., p. 13, n.) 


234 Christianity as Organized 


Ignatius himself was bishop—the one bishop—of Antioch in 
Syria. Condemned in that city to be thrown to the lions of the 
Roman amphitheater, he embraces the opportunity to write let- 
ters to various churches on his triumphal march (as it was, in 
his estimation) to the imperial city. We know nothing with 
certainty of Ignatius’ life and character except what is shown 
in these epistles. But in them he is recognizable as a noble and 
striking personality—not well equipoised perhaps, an extremist, 
but humble, bold, enthusiastic, of a spiritual mind, absolutely 
loyal to his Lord. He writes with a pen of fire. Having been 
adjudged to death for Christ’s sake, he is eager for the stroke 
to fall. Huis bonds are “spiritual jewels,” because they promise 
contact with beasts at Rome, through which bloody gate he shall 
pass to wear the martyr’s crown. 

Nor did Ignatius regard his own death only as imminent, but 
also the end of the world’—an idea that seems to have prevailed 
almost universally in the Ante-Nicene age. The earth was near- 
ing its death-throes. Christ would soon come in glory to over- 
throw the wicked and set up his universal kingdom, ‘The last 
times,”’ Ignatius says, “are upon us;” “Weigh carefully the times, 
look for Him who is above all time, eternal and invisible, yet 
who became visible for our sakes.”” And what was the result of 
Ignatius’ own weighing of the times? An overpowering con- 
viction of the need of ecclesiastical unity. The churches were 
not united as they ought to have been. False teaching—Judaiz- 
ing, Doketism—faction, schism, evil tempers were arising to 
threaten their integrity. So the demand for unity was impera- 
tive, and the visible center and representative of that unity was 
the bishop. Hence entire and unquestioning obedience to the 
bishop must be insisted on; and it is insisted on, chapter after 
chapter, in epistle after epistle. Indeed, this claim of subjection 
to episcopal, or pastoral, authority passes all reasonable bounds, 
and becomes preposterous, if not profane. ‘He who does any- 


1To the Ephesians, It. °To Polycarp, 3. 


Unity: Bishop—Early Development 235 


thing without the knowledge of his bishop,” writes the rapt and 
impetuous pen, “does serve the devil.” 

Not the most devoted Episcopalian of an evangelical church 
in the present day could for a moment acknowledge the authority 
of such a lord of the congregation as the Ignatian bishop. 
Imagine the type to have become universal—every Christian 
congregation in the world ruled by a pastor who was under no 
ecclesiastical authority whatever and who was himself absolutely 
autocratic. Is there anywhere on earth to-day an Ignatian in 
belief ? 

It must not be inferred, however, that Ignatius looked upon 
the bishop as alone to be reverenced and obeyed. For he re- 
peatedly joins the presbyters with him as officers to whom also 
the submission of the Christian community is due. 

It was the power of government for which Ignatius stood. 
That was the idea that possessed him. When he refers to the 
heavenly things, for example, it is not to streets of gold and 
fountains of living water, but to “the places of the angels, and 
their gathering under their respective princes.” So in a Chris- 
tian congregation, which should be a miniature heaven of order, 
peace, and obedience, he would have official authority to be 
strong, unimpeachable, absolute. This he thoroughly believed 
necessary to the preservation of the Church in those perilous 
times, or, for that matter, perhaps in any time—if other times 
were to be. “See that ye obey the bishop,” he said, “and the 
presbytery with an undivided heart.’ But the bishop imper- 
sonated this power of government in the congregation as did 


1To the Smyrnzans, 9. 

“Subject to the bishop as to the grace of God, and to the presbyters as to 
the law of Jesus Christ.” (To the Magnesians, 2.) “It is manifest, there- 
fore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would look upon the 
Lord himself.” (To the Ephesians, 6.) 

So a marriage contracted without “the approval of the bishop” was held 
by Ignatius to be not “according to God.” (Ep. to Polycarp, 5.) 

To the Ephesians, 20; To the Trallians, 3, 7. 

“For Ignatius the authority of the bishop, of the presbyters, and of the 
deacons, forms in some sort an inseparable whole, a harmony of spiritual 
forces, a pattern of the unity which ought to reign among the faithful. He 


236 Christianity as Organized 


no mere presbyter or board of presbyters—as did no other living 
man. Therefore, without hesitation or complaint, all should 
submit themselves to him. 

Now these singularly overwrought views of pastoral power 
were not uncongenial to the sacerdotalism that later gained com- 
plete ascendency in the Church. In scriptural forms of Chris- 
tianity, however, they could not hope to maintain themselves. 
So far from securing unity, they would disturb and divide. But 
the single episcopate itself, which Ignatius is the first writer in 
the whole body of Christian literature to set forth, became uni- 
versal and has been perpetuated. All churches have it. Indeed, 
was not such a result inevitable? For this episcopate is simply 
the office of pastor, preacher in charge, rector of the local con- 
gregation. 

Let us be careful, also, in passing from the letters of Ignatius, 
not ourselves to exaggerate the significance of his exaggerated 
view of congregational obedience to the pastor. Three things 
may here be noted in connection with this Ignatian episcopal 
idea: (1) His dream of the mystic personality of the bishop, 
with its over-emphasis of pastoral authority, was his own, rea- 
sonably explicable on the ground of personal temperament and 
circumstances; and hence it should not be taken as expressing 
the general view and practice of the churches;’ (2) he was not 


does not imagine that discord can enter in among them: they are for him 
the government, Authority with a capital A. . . . The demands of Igna- 
tius in favor of episcopal authority are still more demands in favor of 
ecclesiastical authority and of authority in itself than in favor of the bishop 
properly speaking to the detriment of the other officers of the Christian 
societies.” (Réville, “Les Origines de L’Episcopat,” pp. 495, 497.) 

1“The same exclusive passion which he brought to the love of suffering 
and the seeking for martyrdom he brought also to the extolling of that 
which seemed to him to be the panacea for all the ills of the churches— 
submission to the episcopacy. But a calm analysis of even his own testimon: 
proves that the reality was very far from corresponding to his dream, an! 
that if he is compelled to insist with so much energy upon obedience to & 
clesiastical government, it is because the churches themselves which he a7 
dresses are still very far from putting it into practice.” (Réville, “IS 
Origines de L’Episcopat,” p. 481.) 

Cf. Ramsay, “Church in Roman Empire,” pp. 370, 371. 


Unity: Bishop—Early Development 237 


so much the champion of the single as opposed to the plural pas- 
torship of a church as of the fact rather than the form of abso- 
lute official authority; (3) as a matter of fact, the single pastor- 
ship was not universal at this time, but confined apparently to 
the churches of Asia. 


At the beginning a democratic congregational government 
with a board of presbyters as overseers (bishops) ; then a board 
of presbyters as rulers, with a bishop as president of the congre- 
gation; and then the single bishop as ruler—such is the evolu- 
tion of the episcopate in the local congregation. 

Let it be borne in mind, however, that it is not certain that all 
the churches passed through all three of these stages of devel- 
opment. And even if they did, it is quite certain that they did 
not pass through them contemporaneously. In some cases the 
process was much more rapid than in others. Especially should 
it be noticed that while in the churches of Asia, as represented 
by the Ignatian epistles, the rule of the single bishop was at 
least in course of establishment in the first quarter of the second 
century, it was not yet established in the churches represented 
by the “Sources of the Apostolic Canons” even as late as about 
fifty years thereafter. 


4. THE IRENZAN CONCEPTION OF THE BisHop’s OFFICE. 


Toward the close of the second century a different conception 
of the episcopal office was taught by Irenzus, Bishop of Lyons. 
We shall be prepared for an appreciation of it, if we remember 
that meantime heretical teachings had increased and multiplied. 
They had ‘“‘come in like locusts to devour the harvests of the 
gospel.” Perhaps the most irrational, and certainly the most 
powerful, of the heretics were the Gnostics, in confutation of 
whom Irenzus wrote his great book “Against the Heresies.” 

Let it also be remembered that as yet there was no formally 
recognized canon of the New Testament Scriptures. And, more- 
over, the Gnostics were claiming to have in their own possession 


238 Christianity as Organized 


apostolic writings’ and also traditions, “secret teachings,” which 
set forth the true faith of the gospel. How, then, were the Chris- 
tian people to be effectually safeguarded against false teaching? 
It was no alarmist’s cry. There was a very real danger—greater 
than in the time of Ignatius. In fact, there was more than any 
mere danger, however great; for the work of disintegration had 
actually begun in Christian communities. The subtle forces of 
error were already making encroachment and conquest. There 
seemed no hope of successfully resisting them except with a firm 
and united front. There must be unity of belief and of action. 
Let the lines be drawn and the Catholic Church distinctly made 
known as opposed to heretics and schismatics. 

But here arose a vital question. There could be no doctrinal 
unity without some standard of orthodoxy. What, then, was 
this standard, and how might it be recognized and maintained? 

Irenzeus’ answer to such questions was that the true doctrine 
might be found in the churches that had existed in various coun- 
tries from the days of the Apostles. It had been committed to 
them by the Apostles themselves, especially to the presbyters, or 
bishops’-—he seems to use the two terms interchangeably, or at 
least to call the bishops presbyters*°—and transmitted by them to 
the generations following. 

Now the presbyters of these successive generations were chief- 


*Such, e. g., were “The Gospel of the Truth,” in the possession of the 
Valentinian sect, and Marcion’s Gospel, which was a mutilated copy of the 
genuine “Gospel According to Luke”’—the parts which Marcion regarded as 
Judaic rather than Pauline being omitted. 

“The things which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the 
same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” 
(2) Oi 4.2) 

°“The tradition which is of the Apostles, which is guarded by the suc- 
cession of the presbyters.” (“Against Heresies,” III. 2, 2.) “We are able 
to recount those whom the Apostles appointed to be bishops in the churches, 
and their successors.” (Jbid., III. 3. 1.) “And her [the Roman Church’s] 
faith proclaimed unto men by the succession of bishops.” (Ibid., IIT. 3. 2.) 
“Cleave to those who both guard, as we said before, the doctrine of the 
Apostles, and with their order as presbyters exhibit such speech,” etc. (Jbid., 
IV. 26, 4.) 


Unity: Bishop—Early Development 239 


ly old men, “elders” in the literal sense of the word; for it was 
the mature or elderly men that would naturally be chosen, and the 
office was for life. So the aged presbyter might be pictured as 
handing on, before he should “go hence and be no more,” the 
tradition of apostolic teaching, which he himself had learned in 
youth from some aged predecessor. 

Irenzeus himself was such an “elder.” In his early days in 
Asia he had even known men who had known Apostles; he had 
been a friend and pupil of Polycarp, who had been a friend and 
pupil of the Apostle John.” So it was a chain of but three links 
—the Apostle John, the martyr Polycarp, the bishop Irenzus: 
only a single intermediate link between Irenzeus and the disciple 
that leaned upon Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper. Or, to mark 
the successive dates, we may think of our Lord as speaking his 
last words to the disciples, and sending them out into all the 
world as his witnesses, about the year 30 of our era; of the 
disciple John in Ephesus at the close of his life, about the year 
100; of Polycarp in Smyrna, about the year 155; of Irenzeus in 
Lyons, about the year 202. Here, distinctly traceable, was a 
succession of evangelic witnesses from the very days of Jesus, 
sending down the word of oral testimony through five genera- 
tions of Christian believers. 

But it could not always continue so. As the oncoming years 
kept pushing the apostolic age farther and farther back into the 
shadow-land of antiquity, this line of testimony would be seri- 
ously weakened. What should take its place? The answer of 
our age would be: Scholarship—not tradition, but the original 
documents, the apostolic writings, are the rule of faith; and 
these must be vouched for by New Testament scholars. The 
answer of that age, however, as uttered by Irenzus, was one 


1“Ror when I was a boy I saw thee [Florinus, a presbyter of the church 
at Rome] in lower Asia with Polycarp, moving in splendor in the royal 
court. . . . Ll am able to describe the very place in which the blessed 
Polycarp sat as he discoursed, . . . and the accounts which he gave 
of his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord.” 
(Irenzeus, quoted in Eusebius, H. E., v. 20.) 


240 Christianity as Organized 


that could be much more easily grasped and utilized: The bish- 
ops, he said, are the official conservators of both the apostolic 
writings and traditions. They were able to vouch for the true 
apostolic doctrine, delivered to them through the presbyteral suc- 
cession, to be delivered by them in turn to those who should suc- 
ceed to their places, and so on through the generations of time. 

Here, then, were the official custodians and interpreters of 
apostolic teaching. But what if they should make mistakes con- 
cerning it? This was a difficulty with which Irenzus did not 
directly deal. But he did suggest that the bishops were super- 
naturally illumined, so that it was not to be supposed that they 
would make mistakes. In virtue of their office they received 
from the Holy Spirit a gift of insight—a “sure gift of the 
truth” —through which they would be able to recognize a gen- 
uine apostolic writing or tradition. He speaks but vaguely and 
uncertainly, it is true, about this episcopal gift—as well he 
might." But at any rate the bishops are to be acknowledged and 
trusted as the bond of orthodoxy, the guarantors of the faith, 
the duly qualified teachers of the Church.” 


*The passages (the only two, so far as I know) in which this special 
power of discerning the truth seems to be claimed for the chief officers of 
the churches are the following: “Wherefore we should hearken to the pres- 
byters who are in the Church; those who have their succession from the 
Apostles, as we have pointed out; who with their succession in the epis- 
copate received a sure gift of the truth (certuwm charisma veritatis), at the 
good pleasure of the Father.” (“Against Heresies,’ IV. 26, 2.) “Now 
where one may find such [good presbyters] Paul teaches, saying, ‘God hath 
set some in the Church, first Apostles, then prophets, thirdly teachers.’ 
Then where the Lord’s free gifts are set, there we must learn the truth.” 
(Ibid., IV. 26, 5.) In this latter passage Ireneus apparently has in mind © 
the charismata of the apostolic age, and supposes the charisma veritatis to 
be one of them, and to be possessed by the presbyters (and here he prob- 
ably means specifically the bishops) of his own day. 

2Of course I am here quoting, not indorsing, Ireneus’ views. The fact 
of a church’s having apostolic founders and being presided over either by 
presbyters or by a single bishop did not guarantee the purity of its teach- 
ing. Neither the general congregation nor the office of supervision was such 
a doctrinal wheat field that the enemy could not enter it to sow tares. 
On the contrary, from the first “when the blade sprang up and brought forth 
fruit, then appeared the tares also.” 


Unity: Bishop—Early Development 241 


Observe, the idea of the episcopate for which the devout and 
impassioned Ignatius pleads is that of the individual bishop, pre- 
siding over his congregation with absolute authority, and stand- 
ing toward it in the place of God himself. No predecessor, no 
preceding ordination, no intermediary of any kind is taken ac- 
count of. Immediately from God is this pastoral office with its 
unimpeachable authority over each separate little Christian com- 
munity. But the idea which the more thoughtful and large- 
minded Irenzeus, two generations later, would make good, is that 
of the bishops as the chief officers of successive apostolic church- 
es, fulfilling the function of depositaries of the faith once de- 
livered to the saints, and standing in the place of the Apostles. 
In Irenzeus, then, appears (and for the first time in Christian 
literature) the idea of an apostolic succession—though not of 
such a succession as is now ordinarily known by that name. 


16 


IX. 


THE BISHOP: LATER DEVELOPMENT OF HIS 
OFFICE. 


A HALF century later we reach the age of “the Ignatius of 
the West,” Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (d. 258). The name 
of this able and zealous administrator is perhaps the most sig- 
nificant in the whole history of the episcopate. 


I. PECULIARITIES OF THE CyPRIANIC EPISCOPATE. 


Cyprian strenuously emphasized the authority of the individ- 
ual bishop. Like his prototype, Ignatius, he regarded this au- 
thority as monarchical. Though elected to his office by the bish- 
ops of the province, with the consent and codperation of the 
people, the bishop, when once elected, becomes not the people’s 
representative, but their lord. The presbyters, to be sure, are 
his councilors, and he ought to consult them, as also the people 
(Cyprian did so). But like the early Roman king in relation 
to his senate, or the modern Methodist Episcopal bishop in re- 
lation to his “cabinet” of presiding elders, he may at his option 
either accept or reject their counsel. Under a sense of responsi- 
bility to God alone, it is his own will, not that of presbyter or 
people, that he executes.” 

Nor might any bishop exercise the least authority over any 
other. There could be no lower and higher: the episcopal pastor 


Which very thing, too, we observe to come from divine authority, that 
the priest [bishop, here as uniformly in Cyprian] should be chosen in the 
presence of the people, under the eyes of all, and should be approved worthy 
and suitable by public judgment and testimony.” (Cyprian, Ep. LXVII. 
(LXVII.), 4.) 

2“Though the presbyters may still have retained the shadow of a con- 
trolling power over the acts of the bishop, though the courtesy of language 
by which they were recognized as fellow-presbyters was not laid aside, yet 
for all practical ends the independency of the episcopate was completely 
established by the principles and the measures of Cyprian.’ (Lightfoot, 
“The Christian Ministry’ (Whittaker), p. 108.) nal 


(242) 


Bishop: Later Development 243 


of a church in the obscurest village in Christendom stood on pre- 
cisely the same legal level with the pastor of the church in the 
city of Carthage or Alexandria or Rome. Though all the bish- 
ops in the world except one should unite to command or to judge 
that one, he would rest under no obligation to submit. Each 
was a monarch; and no monarch, however small his dominion, 
may acknowledge the control of any other, nor of all others com- 
bined. “For no one of us,” said Cyprian, presiding at a Coun- 
cil of Carthage, “sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or by 
tyrannical terror forces his colleagues to obeying, inasmuch as 
every bishop, in the free use of his liberty and power, has the 
right of forming his own judgment, and can no more be judged 
by another than he can himself judge another.’* The president’s 
language surely does not lack strength or explicitness. 

But more distinctively the name of Cyprian stands for the 
recognition of the collective bishops as constituting the universal 
Church. “The Church is in the bishop:” that was his word, and 
it had reference not only to the Idcal congregation, but to all 
Christian congregations as a whole. For he goes on to say: 
“While the Church, which is catholic and true, is not cut nor 
divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the ce- 
ment of priests [bishops] who cohere one with another.’” 

It is true, a germ of this doctrine might be discovered in the 
teaching of Ignatius and of Irenzus, and its germination in the 
councils composed mainly of bishops, that had already been held 
from time to time. But it was through the influence of Cyprian 
—as shown, for instance, in his contest with Stephen of Rome 
on the subject of re-baptism—that the significance and utility of 
the council of bishops were demonstrated as never before. And 
it was through him that, as never before, not simply the council 


*Augustine, “On Baptism,” against the Donatists, II. 3. 

*Ep. LXVIII. (LXVI.), 8 Cf “The episcopate is one, each part of 
which is held by each one for the whole (‘On the Unity of the Church,’ 5), 
and ‘the Church is founded upon the bishops, and every act of the Church 
is controlled by these same rulers.” (“To the Lapsed,” Ep. XXVI. 
(XXX T.), 1.) 


244 Christianity as Organized 


of bishops but the order of bishops was exploited as the bond 
of unity and the constitutive element of the universal Church.* 
In a word, not only congregational but also intercongregational 
and catholic unity was declared to be essentially episcopal.” 

Here a moment’s pause, and a very brief question—What is 
now the Church? It used to be regarded as the Christian peo- 
ple—men and women, ministers and private members, all who 
met together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is now to 
be regarded as still, in a general or receptive or passive sense, 
the Christian people, but as in the vital, constitutive, positive 
sense, the bishops. From these officials proceed all unity, all 
interpretation of truth, all governmental authority and power, 
all sacramental grace. Henceforth Cyprian and his followers 
would have the Church described not as in Christ’s people, but 
as more truly “im the bishop.” 


2. RECONCILIATION OF THE Two IDEAs. 


These, then, were the famous Carthaginian pastor’s two lead- 
ing ideas of church order—the independence of the individual 
bishop, and the episcopal bond of intercongregational and uni- 
versal unity. 

But the two ideas when brought into conjunction do not seem 
at first sight to make a perfect fit. For supposing the bishops to 


“As the individual bishop had been pronounced indispensable to the ex- 
istence of the individual community, so the episcopal order was now put 
forward as the absolute indefeasible representative of the universal Church. 
Synods of bishops indeed had been held repeatedly before; but under 
Cyprian’s guidance they assumed a prominence which threw all existing 
precedents into the shade. . . . He acted throughout on the principle, 
distinctly asserted, that the existence of the episcopal office was not a matter 
of practical advantage or ecclesiastical rule, or even of apostolic sanction, 
but an absolute incontrovertible decree of God.” (Lightfoot, “The Chris- 
tian Ministry,” pp. 106, 107.) 

2“On the Unity of the Church,” passim. “Not where the Christian ex- 
perience is, the gift of a holy spirit in men’s lives, which had been the 
bond and condition everywhere at first; not where the Scriptures are; not 
where the apostolic faith and the rightful bishop are, as with Irenzus; but 
where the rightful bishop is, there, and there alone, is Christ.” (Moore, “The 
New Testament in the Christian Church,” PP. 249, 250. ) 


Bishop: Later Development 245 


disagree concerning a matter of importance—say, some question 
of administration—there being no governing power above them, 
how shall they be held together, and the Church held together 
in them? Cyprian’s answer would have been that they ought 
not to disagree; and he urges them so to act that they “may also 
prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided.” If, how- 
ever, there should be a serious division among the bishops, as 
in fact must and did occur, let a council be called to decide the 
question; and even though some should refuse to be governed 
by its decision, let them be borne with and permitted to pursue 
their own course, and thus kept in the unity of the Church.” 

If, indeed, a bishop should become thoroughly heretical in 
doctrine, schismatic in administration, or corrupt in character, 
he would be regarded, we may suppose, as having thereby virtu- 
ally forsaken the Church, and be refused communion with his 
brethren. In fact, Cyprian even taught that the congregation of 
a morally corrupt bishop ought to reject him.* 

Thus might the two principles of episcopal independence and 
ecclesiastical unity be at least imperfectly harmonized. 

An analogue may be found in modern Congregationalism— 
for ecclesiastical extremes, like others, do sometimes meet. Un- 
der this form of government, each church is independent of all 


*“On the Unity of the Church,” 5. 

*“Some of the bishops here in our province thought that peace was not 
to be granted to adulterers. . . . Still they did not withdraw from the 
assembly of the co-bishops, nor break the unity of the Catholic Church, . 
so that, because that by some peace was granted to adulterers, he who did 
not grant it should be separated from the Church. While the bond of con- 
cord remains, and the undivided sacrament of the Catholic Church endures, 
every bishop directs and disposes his own acts, and will have to give ac- 
count of his purposes to the Lord.” (Ep. LI. (LV.), 21.) 

*“Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the con- 
tagion of sin, while communicating with a priest [bishop] who is a sinner, 
and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their 
overseer. . . . On which account a people obedient to the Lord’s precepts, 
and fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful prelate, and 
not to associate themselves with the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest, espe- 
cially since they themselves have the power of choosing worthy priests or of 


rejecting unworthy ones.” (Ep. LXVII. (LVI), 3.) 


246 Christianity as Organized 


the rest. Nevertheless the churches meet together, through rep- 
resentatives, in council; and whilea church which declines to actin 
accordance with a conciliar decision may still maintain its stand- 
ing in the communion of its sister churches, yet it may, on the 
other hand, for this or any other supposedly sufficient reason, be 
refused representation in councils and cut off from ecclesiastic 
fellowship. We need only substitute bishop for church, in such 
a description, in order to have a correct picture of the Cyprianic 
episcopacy. 


3. THE BisHop’s OFFICE AN IMMEDIATE GIFT FROM Gop. 


And now what, according to Cyprian, is the basis of episcopal 
power? On what does it rest? The answer is: It is an imme- 
diate gift from God. Each bishop, on entering upon his office, 
is invested with this power from on high. Just as Christ gave it 
to the original Apostles; so does he now give it, generation after 
generation, to the bishops. Immediately from him do they re- 
ceive it, and only to him are they accountable for the use of it.’ 

The present Emperor of Germany is reported to have said: 
“We Hohenzollerns accept our crown only from Heaven, and 
are responsible to Heaven only for the performance of our 
duties.” Similar has been the claim of many another monarch 
of both pagan and Christian nations. Similar was Cyprian’s 
claim for his episcopal “crown’”—and later the claim for the 
Roman “triple crown,” which still represents the most imposing 
and powerful theocratic institute of the ages. 

The bishops, indeed, are successors of the Apostles in a reg- 


14Writing about Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, Cyprian says that he “was 
made bishop by the judgment of God and of his Christ” (Ep. LI. (LV.) 8), 
and writing to him he speaks of “the sublime and divine power of gov- 
erning the Church,’ and says: “Undoubtedly there are bishops made not by 
the will of God, but they are such as are made outside the Church.” (Ep. 
LIV. (LIX.), 5.) 

“So that the Lord who condescends to elect and appoint for himself 
priests [bishops] in his Church may protect them also when elected and 
appointed by his good will and help, inspiring them to govern,” etc. (Ep. 
XLIV. (XLVIIL), 4) Gi LXIV. (IL); 37 LXVIIL G@xviioe 


Bishop: Later Development 247 


ular line of ordinations. At least, in one passage (there is prob- 
ably no other’) Cyprian makes such an assertion: “Christ, who 
says to the Apostles, and thereby to all chief rulers, who by vica- 
rious ordination succeed to the Apostles, ‘He that heareth you 
heareth me, and he that despiseth you despiseth me and Him 
that sent me.’”* But we should misinterpret his teaching to 
suppose that it was here that Cyprian would chiefly rest his 
monarchical claim. That upon which he lays the main stress, 
in repeated assertion, is the bishop’s present and immediate in- 
vestiture with the “sublime and divine power of governing.” 
As a recent scholarly writer has expressed it, Cyprian taught not 
so much a succession from the Apostles as a succession of apos- 
tes." 

Something more as to the Cyprianic episcopate. It was a 
priesthood. The bishop was a sacrificing and mediating priest. 
He offered the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper as a sacri- 
fice; he could remit sins;’ he imparted the Holy Spirit to the 
soul in baptism,’ and could authorize presbyters and deacons to 
do the same. True, the presbyter was himself a priest, but so 


*Ep. LXXV. (LXIX.) 5 looks in this direction: “While the true shepherd 
* remains and presides over the Church of God by successive ordination,” etc. 
erp ExaVTh) CL XVI), 4 

®Ep. XLIV. (XLVIII.), 4; LXIV. (III.), 3; LXVII. (LXVL), o. 

4“This thought of apostolic succession which is to be found in Cyprian 
was very different from what is seen both in Irenzus and in Tertullian. 
It was not a succession from the apostles, but a succession of apostles. 
The historical matter-of-fact succession disappeared, and the conception be- 
came a creation of dogmatic imagination. The thought of succession from 
the apostles, in a line of office-bearers creating a vital connection between 
the generations as they passed, was scarcely in Cyprian’s mind.” (Lindsay, 
“The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries,” p. 311.) 

5Ep. LXII. (LXIII.), passim. 

Shp, LXVIIL (LXVL), 5; LXII. (LXIII.), 8;,LXXIL (LXXIIL), 7; 
LXIX. (LXXL.), 3. 

™ Whence we perceive that only they who are set over the Church and 
established in the gospel law and in the ordinance of the Lord are allowed 
to baptize and to give remission of sins; but that without, nothing can either 
be bound or loosed, where there is none who can either bind or loose any- 
thing.” (Ep. LXXII. (LXXIII.), 7.) See also IX. (XVL), 2 


er. ae H i H = ‘ 
248 Christianity as Organized 


dependent on the bishop as hardly to have an independent right 
to the title; which seems to be the reason that when Cyprian 
speaks of God’s “priests,” it is the bishops only that he has in 
mind, 

Was not the bishop’s priesthood, indeed, the central secret and 
source of his power? In making him a priest, did not Almighty 
God clothe him with supreme authority? If it was said of the 
priests and judges of Israel, as Cyprian more than once quoted 
to prove his autocratic position, ““The man that doeth presump- 
tuously, in not hearkening unto the priest that standeth to min- 
ister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that 
man shall die,”’ how can the man who refuses to obey the priest 
of the New Covenant, with the sacraments of salvation in his 
hands, and the word of ecclesiastical absolution or condemna- 
tion on his lips, hope to be saved ? 

So, without the bishop there was no Church, and out of the 
Church there was no salvation.” 


4. ESTIMATE OF THE CyPRIANIC EPISCOPATE. 


Such was Cyprianism. And now should it be asked, What 
proof of these stupendous claims was forthcoming? the answer 
must be, None of any worth. They were simply dogmatic con- 
ceptions, representing what seemed to their propagandist to be 
needful and true, but resting on no proper historic or exegetic 
grounds. They were the ideas of a Roman lawyer, familiar 
with the governmental spirit and forms of the Empire, made a 
bishop only two or three years after his baptism. He was not 
a careful reasoner nor a Bible scholar, but more of a zealot than 
of a student—an ecclesiastic ready to believe and utilize such 
doctrines as lent themselves to the administration of a strong 
imperial government in the Church and an externalist preparing 
the way for the substitution of penance for repentance. As to 


Deut. xvii. 12. 

“He who does not hold this unity does not hold God’s law, does not 
hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation.” 
(“On the Unity of the Church,” 6.) 


Bishop: Later Development 240 


exegesis, Cyprian founds an argument for baptism on the words 
of Jesus, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst;’”* for the unity of the Church, on the 
seamless robe for which the soldiers cast lots at the Cross;’ for 
the ordination of bishops by a Divine decree, on the assurance 
that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the heavenly 
Father ;* and for the permanency of the priesthood, on the com- 
mand of our Lord to the cleansed leper: “Go, show thyself to 
the priest.” Such interpretations of Scripture are quite worthy 
to be classed with that of the popes in making the words of 
Simon Peter, “Behold, here are two swords,’ represent the 
power of the pope over both ecclesiastical and civil rulers; or 
that of the Tractarian divine who explained the Wicket Gate in 
“The Pilgrim’s Progress” as signifying baptism, and the Palace 
Beautiful as the Lord’s Supper; or that of the evangelic preacher 
who from the text, “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor 
man, he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich,’ drew the 
theme that he who enjoys the means of grace shall be poor in 
spirit and he that loves the provisions of the gospel shall not be 
rich in his own esteem. 

But such exegesis, bringing reason and truth into contempt, 
is not adapted to confirm one’s confidence in either the intel- 
lectual discernment or the honesty of a teacher. Truly a good 
man with rich administrative gifts may limp in logic and fall 
headlong in exegesis; but he must be content by so much to lose 
authority as an expounder for all after ages of so scriptural a 
subject as the nature of the Ecclesia of Jesus Christ. For he 
could easily enough make the Scriptures of either the Old or the 
New Covenant describe it as anything whatever that he be- 
lieved it, or might wish it, to be. 

Here, however, was an ecclesiastical unity enforced by the 
most awful sanctions conceivable—salvation for those within, 
and eternal damnation for all outsiders. A purely Christward 


1Ep. LXII. (LXIII.), 8. 2“On the Unity of the Church,” 7. 
Seip ULV. | (LEX) SS ul oV LL CLV) eet: 
‘Luke xxii. 38. SProve, XXty 17 


250 Christiamty as Organized 


unity? By no means: the mediation of the Church was over- 
emphasized and despiritualized. Practically the Church was of- 
fered to men instead of the Saviour. With whatever high and 
martyrlike sincerity maintained, Cyprian’s was an external, 
legal, organic, priestly unity, unauthorized and despotic, com- 
pelling the sometimes resistant but often pliant and unintelligent 
will into submission. It has borne fruit through the subsequent 
ages after its kind. 

“God be praised!” exclaimed Cyprian when the proconsul pro- 
nounced upon him as a Christian the sentence of death by the 
sword. And doubtless his glorious martyrdom added an influ- 
ence of its own to the propagation and perpetuity of his dog- 
matic beliefs. But surely it is a fact most tragical that a man 
may seriously misconceive the truth or pervert the institutions of 
the holy Master for whom he is gladly willing to lay down his 
life. 


Let us now dwell a moment, by way of résumé, upon the three 
most distinguished names that mark the growth of the episco- 
pate during the first century and a quarter of its history: Igna- 
tius, in the early part of the second century, who stands for the 
bishop as the congregational center of unity; Irenzeus, about the 
close of this century, who stands for the bishop as the center of 
orthodox teaching; Cyprian, about the middle of the next cen- 
tury, who stands for the bishop as the center of umty for the 
whole Church. 


5. RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF DIOCESAN EPISCOPACY. 


We have here reached the limit of the episcopal office in one 
direction. It has never asserted any higher order of preroga- 
tives. Indeed, how could it? But the administrative breadth of 
the individual bishop’s official claim must now be considered. 
How many congregations were included in his jurisdiction? 
This question will require us to go back to the beginning and 
mark the origin and progress of diocesan episcopacy. 

In the time of Ignatius, and for many years afterwards, there 


Es 


Bishop: Later Development 251 


was no such officer in the Church as we of to-day are familiar 
with under the name of bishop. The bishop, as already indi- 
cated, was simply the pastor, or ruler, of the local congregation. 
Outside the congregation he had no authority, nor was he him- 
self subject to any outside authority. In brief, church polity was 
at that time beyond controversy, neither diocesan nor synodical, 
but congregational. It is also worth while to notice that the 
Church in those days was chiefly in the city and its immediate 
neighborhood; the villagers (pagani), not yet Christianized, 
were still for the most part pagans.” 

What we wish to learn is the process by which the pastor, or 
congregational bishop, became pastor pastorum, or diocesan bish- 
op. Here, as often in our study, some mental patience will be 
called for; because no one short answer can possibly represent 
the facts. The process of pastoral expansion was at least four- 
fold. 

(1) As new congregations were formed from time to time in 
a city—as, for instance, in Rome or Alexandria—and its vicin- 
ity, the bishop of the mother church would appoint some pres- 
byter—or presbyters, for as late as the third century it was the 
rule that there should be at least two—to take charge of each of 
these outlying congregations. Meanwhile he himself not only 
retained his own original charge, but also exercised a general 
superintendence over these others. The arrangement was sim- 
ilar to that of a strong city church in the present day which has 
established one or more chapels (so-called “chapels of ease’’), 
and retains them under its own general supervision—a single 
pastor for all, with such assistants as may be necessary. 

Out of this development, which seems to have started in the 
latter part of the second century, arose the first form of what 


*Not that in all localities village and country Christians were rare in those 
days. As early as the year 112, or thereabout, Pliny the Younger, in his 
famous letter to Trajan, says: “The contagion of that superstition has pene- 
trated not the cities only but the villages and the country.’ Persecutions, 
also, had a tendency to spread Christianity in the country, both by causing 
Christians to seek refuge there from their enemies, and by the condemnation 
of many others to go as laborers in the mines. 


282 Christianity as Organized 


was afterwards called diocesan episcopacy. As we had occasion 
to notice in connection with the presbyterate,” the relation be- 
tween the bishop’s own particular congregation and the other 
congregations of his district was at first very close. He appoint- 
ed all pastors, or presiding presbyters; he called them together 
in council; he sent the consecrated bread and wine every Sunday 
to these congregations for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper; 
he must lay his hands upon all baptized persons before their 
baptism should be regarded as complete. 

But this extreme closeness of relation between the bishop in 
the mother church and the presbyter in the dependent church 
was not perpetuated. The presiding presbyters gained the right 
to consecrate the sacramental bread and wine in their own 
churches; and their membership in the bishop’s council became 
a mere nominal matter. The bishop, however, still appointed 
these presiding presbyters, and required them, as well as the 
presbyters of his own congregation, to present him reports of 
their work. 

(2) When at a somewhat later period—say, toward the close 
of the third century—the country people (heath-en) had been 
converted in large numbers, and gathered into congregations in 
the smaller towns and villages, these congregations, as a rule, 
had each its own bishop: which of course is simply saying that 
they had each its own pastor.” But in some cases the congre- 
gations were grouped under the charge of a country bishop 
(xoperioxoros). A similar modern arrangement might be found 
in an American Methodist circuit. 3 

The country bishops, however, were under the jurisdiction of 
the city bishops—not coequal with them. Nor did their office 
ever rise to any notable prominence or influence. Appearing 
first in Asia Minor, and afterwards in many places, East and 
West, its place was taken in the West, after a few centuries, by 


+See pp. 219, 220. 

2“Tn the only half-converted province of North Africa, 470 episcopal towns 
are known by name.” (Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” 
p. 79.) 


Bishop: Later Development 253 


the archdiaconate; and so it passed away. In the Churches of 
the East it still has a place; though it does not seem to have ex- 
isted continuously from the early times. 

(3) In Gaul and Spain, in the seventh and eighth centuries, 
wealthy landowners would build chapels on their estates and ap- 
point priests to take charge of the congregation." These congre- 
gations, accordingly, were independent of episcopal control, and 
indeed of all other control except that of the lord of the estate. 

Now it is evident that this state of things was not likely to 
be kept up very long. For the landlord was not competent to 
preside over ecclesiastical affairs. And as to the ministers who 
would accept positions at his hand, they were men who were or- 
dained, according to a loose custom of the time, absoluté—that 
is to say, without being assigned to any particular congregation. 
As might have been expected, they proved to be unfit, self-seek- 
ing men. In these circumstances, church discipline came to 
naught. 

On the other hand, there was the bishop in the county town, 
with his strong church, reaching out to extend his jurisdiction, 
and to gather the whole Christian population under his own 
supreme authority and care. Besides, the sovereign—this was 
certainly true of that most dread sovereign, Charlemagne—fa- 
vored and even commanded the centralization of ecclesiastic 
rule. Thus it came to pass that before the close of the eighth 
century, all these independent congregations were brought into 
subordination to the bishop of the county town. Thus the coun- 
ty became a diocese.” 

(4) Anglo-Saxon England and the uncivilized tribes of Ger- 
many were converted, and subjected to the control of Rome, 
chiefly by two missionaries—Augustine and Boniface. These 


*It is through a somewhat similar custom in early English history that 
it has come to pass that, even unto the present time, very many “livings” 
are at the disposal of private patrons. “The missionaries became settled 
clergy. The township or group of townships which fell within the holding 
or patronage of an English noble or landowner became the parish and his 
chaplain its parish priest.” (Green, “The Making of England,” p. 369.) 

*Hatch, “Growth of Church Institutions,” p. 43 ff. 


254 Christianity as Organized 


two men were appointed by the pope as missionary bishops in 
their respective fields of labor. Accordingly, as they succeeded 
in Christianizing the people, they organized them into congre- 
gations under a centralized episcopal government. In England 
this organization was perfected—a number of bishoprics being 
grouped about the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury by Theo- 
dore of Canterbury—in the latter part of the seventh century. 

In these four ways, then, it came about that the pastor of a 
single congregation became the superintendent of all the con- 
gregations of a certain district. And this was the evolution of 
the diocesan bishop. 


6. Ritual EpiscopaL FUNCTIONS. 


In addition to his superintendency, there were certain ritual 
functions which the bishop appropriated. 

Of these the chief was ordination. Who were the ordainers, 
admitting the elected person into office through the accustomed 
ceremony of laying on of hands with prayer, during the apos- 
tolic age? So far as our information goes, they were Apostles,” 
delegates of Apostles,” or an Apostle together with presbyters.” 
Who were the ordainers for some time thereafter? Here very 
little information is available. It is reasonable to suppose that, 
under the single episcopate, from the outset the bishop would 
take a leading part in this consecrating of men to the ministry 
of the gospel. It would be well-nigh inevitable, would it not? 
There is evidence, however, that even as late as the fourth cen- 
tury presbyters, occasionally at least, exercised this function. 
Cyprian complains of the schismatic presbyter Novatian: “He 
it is who, without my leave or knowledge, of his factiousness 
and ambition, appointed his attendant Felicissimus a deacon:” 
from which complaint it is a fair inference that with the bishop’s 
“leave” Novatian was competent to appoint, or ordain, a dea- 
con.” Also, the Council of Ancyra (314) forbade country bish- 
ops and city presbyters to ordain either presbyters or deacons 


*Acts vi. 6; xiv. 23. ®2 Tim. 1.63 ©) imuavennds 
*Titus i. 5. *Ep, XLVITL ln): 


Bishop: Later Development 255 


“in another parish;’* which implies that up to that time it had 
not been prohibited. Again, in the city of Alexandria, the pres- 
byters who elected the bishop out of their own number also con- 
ducted him to the episcopal chair; and this seems to have been 
the only ceremony of his induction into office.” 

But as the scriptural conception of ordination underwent its 
change from that of appointment to office of a man already qual- 
ified by the Holy Spirit to that of his qualification through the 
laying on of hands itself,” and at the same time the bishop came 
to be accepted as the successor of the original Apostles, it was 
felt that he alone should be empowered to admit men into the 
Christian ministry. So from the fourth century onward ordi- 
nations were positively restricted to episcopal hands.* 

In the Church of the West another exclusive function of the 
bishop was confirmation. ‘This rite originated in the imposition 
of hands as an accompaniment of baptism. Whoever baptized 
also laid hands upon the subject, at the same time, in blessing, 
after what was supposed, not very intelligently, to be apostolic 
example.” But the bishop claimed to be the most proper ad- 
ministrator of baptism; and as it was impracticable for him to 


*It is difficult fully to understand the Canon (XIII.), which runs as fol- 
lows: “It is not lawful for Chorepiscopoi to ordain presbyters or deacons, 
and most assuredly presbyters of a city, without the commission of the 
bishop given in writing, in another parish.” 

?Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” p. 134; Lightfoot, 
“The Christian Ministry,” pp. 86-88. 

8See p. 205 ff. 

*See, for example, Jerome “To Evangelus,” 1: “For what except ordi- 
nation does a bishop do that a presbyter does notr” 

®Acts viii. 14-17. 

Cf. rubric in the Order for the Ministration of Baptism in the Ritual of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South: “The minister may, at his discre- 
tion, lay hands on the subject, accompanying the act with a suitable invo- 
cation.” 

“The narrative of the Acts elsewhere assures us that the Apostles laid 
their hands on all Christians after their baptism, in order by this means to 
impart to them that gift of the Holy Ghost which is the essence of the 
Christian life’ (Gore, “The Church and the Ministry,” pp. 235, 236.) One 
hardly knows how to take such an assertion seriously from the pen of a 
New Testament student or even reader, 


256 Christianity as Organised 


administer it in all cases, he reserved for himself, in case of bap- 
tism by a presbyter or a deacon, the laying on of hands, without 
which the baptism was regarded as incomplete. Accordingly, 
as soon as convenient, in his visitations in the diocese, the bishop 
completed the baptismal ceremony by the laying on of his hands. 
And thus arose the episcopal rite of confirmation.* 

Moreover, it was the teaching of the day that baptism was a 
washing away of sin and thus a preparation for death, while 
confirmation was an impartation of the Holy Spirit and thus a 
preparation for growth in grace and the living of the Christian 
life.” 

In the Church of the East the parish priest has always given 
confirmation, and in immediate connection with baptism. 

Still another ritual function of the episcopacy was the conse- 
cration of church editices. 


Such, then, had the episcopal office become. In the prelatic 
churches, such in its two most prominent functions—namely, 
governing and ordaining—it still remains. 

As to the personal qualifications of bishops and their mode of 
living, the diversity in different ages and countries has been as 


*Smith and Cheatham’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Art. “Con- 
firmation.” 

“T do not deny that it is the practice of the churches, in the case of those 
who, living far from the greater towns, have been baptized by presbyters 
and deacons, for the bishop to visit them, and by the laying on of hands 
invoke the Holy Spirit upon them.” (Jerome, “Dialog. against the Luci- 
ferians,” c. 9.) Jerome adds that this practice is “more by way of honoring 
the episcopate than for any compulsory law.” “Otherwise,” he says, “if the 
Holy Spirit descends only at the bishop’s prayer, they are greatly to be 
pitied who in isolated homes, or in forts, or retired places, after being bap- 
tized by the presbyters and deacons, have fallen asleep before the bishop’s 
visitation.” 


2“As he [Novatian] seemed about to die, he received baptism by affusion. - 


And when he was healed of his sickness, he did not receive the other 
things which it is necessary to have, according to the canon of the Church, 
even the being sealed [confirmed] by the bishop. And as he did not receive 
this, how could he receive the Holy Spirit?” (Letter of Cornelius, in 
Eusebius, H, E. VI. 43, 14.) 


Bishop: Later Development 257 


great as can easily be imagined. It has ranged from densest 
ignorance to the best learning of the schools, from shameless 
and criminal self-seeking to the heights of Christian integrity, 
from pinching asceticism to princely luxury. 

Besides, the alliance of Church and State offered the bishop 
long ago an opportunity, which seems to have been all too eager- 
ly accepted, to assume certain civil and even military functions. 
There were times in the Middle Ages, for instance, when the 
episcopal court held jurisdiction not only over the clergy, both 
as to ecclesiastical and civil cases, but also to a large extent over 
the people. Fines, scourging, imprisonment were some of the 
punishments inflicted. ‘‘The spiritual courts,” says Hallam, 
“usurped, under sophistical pretenses, almost the whole admin- 
istration of justice.’ 

There were also times when bishops (and abbots, who some- 
times even excelled the bishops in power) took command of 
troops, and fighting with their own hands, according to the cus- 
tom of the day, led them to bloody battle against the heretic or 
the Infidel. In many such instances these ecclesiastico-military 
leaders were feudal lords; for perhaps one-half the land of 
Western Europe was then in possession of the Church. So the 
bishops, like any other vassals, must furnish their quota of sol- 
diers and gird on their own swords in time of war, at the com- 
mand of their prince. It might be one of the first services they 
were called upon to perform after ordination. Of some of them 
special deeds of prowess are recorded. Many doubtless were 
both dauntless and sincere. Some died on the battlefield. But 
all were dishonoring the name and office of bishop in the Church 
of God. Their fatal blunder was not unlike that of Urban IL., 
who cried, in his impassioned preaching of the First Crusade: 
“Tt is the will of God. Let these words be your war cry when 
you unsheathe your swords.” They had borrowed his sword 
from the False Prophet. 


*“Europe During the Middle Ages” (1885), Vol. L., p. 625. 
17 


X. 
THE BISHOP: ORIGIN OF HIS OFFICE. 


THERE is another episcopal question, which, unlike some that 
have already held our thoughts for a time, has a far more than 
historic interest. It is the question of the origin of the single 
episcopate. Innumerable are the discussions which it has evoked ; 
and the well-worn arguments of the last three hundred years, in 
the hands of all grades of controvertists, from the feeblest to the 
most formidable, are still doing service. Of late, however, it is 
asserted that fresh discoveries, which call for some reconstruc- 
tion of the older views, have been made in this part of the ec- 
clesiologic field. What these are we may see toward the end of 
the chapter. 

The beliefs that are held as to the origin of the single epis- 
copate vitally concern the unity of organized Christianity in the 
world to-day. For a satisfactory settlement of the question 
would remove one of the chief obstacles to the federation of the 
churches. To search out, then, the facts and the truth concern- 
ing this matter must be no less than a duty. By all means let 
knowledge have its rightful share in determining belief. And it 
will be so increasingly as the Christian centuries come on. 


I. THEORY OF ELEVATION FROM THE PRESBYTERATE. 


Before the close of the second century, the single episcopate 
had been established generally in the churches. Whence did it 
originate? 

Four attempted solutions of the problem have been offered. 

The first is, that the office of bishop and that of presbyter 
were originally one and the same office under two interchangea- 
ble names; but when one of the presbyter-bishops was elected to 
a presidency over his fellows, his power tended to increase and 
the name bishop (“overseer”) came to be restricted to him only. 
And the others were thenceforth called simply presbyters. 


(258) 


—s 


Bishop: Origin of Office 259 


Let us recall the familiar proof-texts which seem to show the 
two titles to be used interchangeably. When Paul had his inter- 
view with “the elders ( tpecBurépous ) of the church” in Ephesus, 
he charged them: ““Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock 
in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops (émwxézovs ),’”* 
These elders, then, were at the same time bishops. Again, in 
the pastoral letter which he writes to his friend and fellow- 
laborer, Titus, he says: “For this cause I left thee in Crete, that 
thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ap- 
point elders (xpecBurépovs) in every city, as I gave thee charge; 
if any manis blameless, . . . for the bishop (éricxowos) must 
be blameless.”* To appoint elders, then, was to appoint bishops. 

Now it might be supposed that only the word “elder” in these 
passages is used as a title—the word “bishop” being a common 
term descriptive of the work which a presbyter must do. And 
this would be no unreasonable supposition. The terms zpoiordpevor 
(“they that are over you”)* and fyovpevo (“they that have the 
rule over you”’)* are undoubtedly used in this mere descriptive, 
or unofficial, sense. In fact, the word “bishop” itself is, at least 
in its participial form, used by the apostle Peter in an unofficial 
sense: “Tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising 
the oversight (emoxdrowres).”* Also, when the term is applied to 
our Lord himself—‘“the Shepherd and Bishop (éxicxoros’”*—it 
seems unlikely that any official meaning of the word is in the 
writer’s mind. Why, then, may it not be so when this same word 
is used in Acts and in Titus? 

But let us turn to another New Testament writing. Opening 
the letter to the Philippians, we read: “Paul and Timothy, serv- 
ants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints who are at Philippi, with 
the bishops and deacons.” Beyond a doubt, both terms in such a 
passage have the appearance of being used as official titles; and 
except on the supposition that presbyters are addressed in this 


Acts xx. 17, 28. * Thess. v. 12, 

“Titus i. 5, 7. *Heb. xiii. 17. 

5; Pet. v. 2. ’Emicxézowrec, however, is omitted here by the present au- 
thorities in textual criticism. ®t Pet. ii. 25. 


260 Christianity as Organized 


salutation under the name of bishops, we should have to adopt 
the extremely unlikely conclusion that either presbyters did not 
exist at Philippi—while on the other hand there were more than 
one bishop—or for some unimaginable reason they were ignored 
in the salutation of the founder and chief pastor of the church. 

Or, again, how shall we understand the third chapter of First 
Timothy, where the qualifications of bishops and deacons are 
laid down? For here too both terms have all the appearance of 
official titles; and unless bishops are the same as presbyters, there 
is an unaccountable omission of presbyters and their qualifica- 
tions. 

Besides, presbyters are mentioned later in this same epistle as 
rulers of the church and entitled to a maintenance, as not to be 
proceeded against in a matter of discipline except on the testi- 
mony of two or three witnesses,” and as not to be rebuked by 
the young pastor, but exhorted as fathers.° These references 
seem more consistent with the idea that presbyters are the same 
as the bishops of the former chapter than with the idea of their 
being a third class of officers, unmentioned by the side of the 
bishops and deacons when the qualifications for office are enu- 
merated. 

Why, then, it may be asked, are they not called bishops here 
also? Possibly because they are here spoken of in such a way— 
namely, as entitled to maintenance, to be dealt with most consid- 
erately if accused of misconduct, and not to be rebuked by the 
young pastor—as would make the venerated name of presbyter 
the more fitting word. 

However, the question of the official or the unofficial use of 
the terms is not essential. For, at all events, the opinion that 
these terms denote the same class or company of persons is now 
held with practical unanimity (barring some recent dissent to be 
noticed a few pages later) by New Testament scholars.* 


17 Tim. v. 17, 18. 27 Dim: ve 19: *7 Timuaveee 

“Tt is a fact now generally recognized by theologians of all shades of 
opinion, that in the language of the New Testament the same officer in the 
Church is called indifferently ‘bishop’ (étioxoroc) and ‘elder’ or ‘presbyter’ 


Bishop: Origin of Office 261 


In the earliest sub-apostolic literature, likewise, the inter- 
changeableness of the two terms, bishop and presbyter, ap- 


1 


pears. 

But it came to pass that, for the sake of a stronger unity and 
a more efficient executive, the presbyter-bishops elected a presi- 
dent of their body, who thus became at the same time president 
of the whole congregation. There was a special demand, as we 
have seen, for some such personal bond of congregational unity 
—hbecause of strifes within the Church and heresies threatening 
from without. And this presiding officer was appropriately 
called bishop or overseer, while the others were retained about 
him as a council of presbyters.* 


(zpecBirepoc).” (Lightfoot, Commentary on Philippians, Excursus on “The 
Synonyms of ‘Bishop’ and ‘Presbyter.’” 

“The admissions of both medieval and modern writers of almost all 
schools of theological opinion have practically removed this from the list of 
disputed questions.” (Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” 
Pp. 39, n.) 

“At first the supreme authority in the Church was vested in the Apostles, 
and the titles of Priest and Bishop were both used of the same order.” (The 
Anglican Ordinal, annotated by Bloomfield Jackson, p. 26. Cf. also Blunt, 
Dictionary of Historical and Doctrinal Theology, Art. “Bishops.”) 

This identity is admitted by Bishop Gore, “The Church and the Ministry,” 
PP. 223-4, 244-5. 

1For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the oversight (épicxor7) 
those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those 
presbyters who, having fulfilled their course before now, have obtained a 
fruitful and perfect departure [from this world], for they have no fear lest 
any one deprive them of the place now appointed them.” (Clement, “To the 
Corinthians,” 44.) The Didache, as we have seen, speaks of bishops and 
deacons, but not of presbyters. The testimony of Hermas is to the same 
effect. (See “The Pastor,’ Sim. IX. 26, 27; Vis. II. 4; III. 5.) Polycarp, 
also, speaks of presbyters and deacons, but not of bishops. (Ep. to Philip- 
pians, 5, 6.) 

2“The objection to this theory is that it throws no light on the difficulties 
which are encountered in the effort to trace the origin of the Christian min- 
istry; while it raises even greater difficulties by making the transition in- 
explicable in the writmgs of Ignatius, where bishops and presbyters are 
sharply distinguished.” (Allen, “Christian Institutions,” p. 79.) I do not 
feel the force of this objection. Unless one insist that all is darkness so 
long as two names, even in a formative state of the Church, are used to 
designate the same officer, the theory in question does throw light on the 


262 Christianity as Organized 


Jerome, “earliest and greatest of ecclesiastical antiquaries,” is 
the first notable name that stands for such a belief. This “an- 
tiquary”’ teaches that, according to the New Testament, “presby- 
ters are the same as bishops,” that the single episcopate arose 
“when subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the 
rest,” and that this was done in the interest of unity—‘“to rem- 
edy schism, and to prevent each individual from rending the 
Church of Christ by drawing it to himself.’” It is not to be 
hastily supposed, however, that Jerome had any sources of in- 
formation on this subject except such as are still open to us all. 
At any rate, the argument by which he sustains his position is 
purely exegetic. It is the New Testament argument—substan- 
tially as given above. 

But the seeming reasonableness of this theory has made great- 
ly in his favor. The presbyters—so the reasoning has run—in 
any important meeting, unless they unaccountably chose to make 
themselves an exception to all ordinary rules of procedure, must 
have had a chairman. And instead of selecting this presiding 
officer for each separate meeting, they might very naturally make 
the office permanent. In fact, there was an inherent probability 
that they would do so. Then, as the need of a stronger or more 
centralized government was felt (whether wisely or unwisely), 
this chairman of the council, or board, of presbyters would rep- 
resent that need. He would be charged with the supreme ad- 
ministrative responsibility. For where was a more suitable man 
likely to be found? Not among the other presbyters or the dea- 
cons or the laity. And what more suitable application of names 
than to fix upon this presiding presbyter the exclusive title of 
bishop, or overseer (which in itself indicates his office), and let 
his council simply retain the title of presbyters (which in itself 
means men of age and experience ?* 


origin of the Christian ministry; and the third or the second or even the 
first quarter of the second century has not been shown to be too soon for 
the single pastorship to appear in certain churches. 

1Ep. to Evangelus, I. 

?Ramsay, in “The Church in the Roman Empire” (p. 367 ff.), offers a 


Bishop: Origin of Office 263 


But whether through a temporary chairmanship or in some 
other way, there are good reasons to believe that the bishop did 
come into his office by elevation from the presbyterate—that “‘one 
presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest,” and at the same 
time over the whole congregation. 

This view is strongly supported by the subsequent use of the 
terms “bishop” and “presbyter.” It has been shown that these 
two terms were at first interchangeable. Later they were not in- 
terchangeable, for all presbyters were not then bishops. Never- 
theless, bishops were still, for a long time, called presbyters. We 
have already noticed that Irenzeus, for example, at the close of 
the second century, still speaks of the bishops as presbyters.” And 
in other writers, both contemporary with Irenzeus and later, a 
similar application of the titles may be seen.” 

Of like significance is the fact that, even as late as the fifth 
century, when a bishop wrote to a presbyter it was customary 
to address him as a “brother presbyter.” 

Now, if the single episcopate had been from the beginning a 
distinct order, or office, why should the bishop be so commonly 
called, both by others and by himself, a presbyter? But on the 
supposition that he began as the first among his brother presby- 
ters, it is not difficult to see how, even after this new form of 
office became prevalent, the old title might be freely applied to 
him still. 


somewhat different view of the development of the épicxovo¢ out of the coun- 
cil of tpecBirepor, His idea is that when the presbyters undertook to do a 
certain work they would appoint one of their number to oversee it, and this 
man would be called, accordingly, the overseer (é7ioxoroc, bishop) for the time. 
Inasmuch, then, as any presbyter might at any time serve temporarily as a 
bishop, the two names were used convertibly. But as some one presbyter 
would inevitably show peculiar aptitude for overseeing the work undertaken 
by the council, he would be kept permanently in this office of oversight; and 
thus the single overseer (bishop) became a permanent officer. This, whether 
true or not, is at least ingenious. 

1See p. 334. *Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry,” pp. 84-86. 

sven in the fourth and fifth centuries, when the independence and power 
of the episcopate had reached its maximum, it was still customary for a 
bishop in writing to a presbyter to address him as ‘fellow-presbyter, thus 
bearing testimony to a substantial identity of office.” (Jbid., p. 85.) 


264 Christranity as Organized 


Another proof is worthy of mention. There is an actual and 
conspicuous example of the making of a bishop by elevation from 
the presbyterate. As a matter of historic fact, it was the custom, 
through a period of two hundred years, in one of the chief 
churches of the early centuries, the church in Alexandria, for 
the presbyters, on the death of a bishop, to meet together and 
select his successor out of their own number.’ 

Now as to the exact date at which the single episcopate began, 
no certain knowledge has yet been gained. Which is not sur- 
prising, when we remember that it arose in that period of early 
church history concerning one of whose features all investigators 
are absolutely well agreed—its obscurity. The office would seem 
to have been instituted at different dates in different localities; 
first of all perhaps in Asia Minor. And inasmuch as Ignatius in 
his letters to the Asian churches does not-speak of it as a new 
institution, the opinion has been held that it was established there 
before the close of the first century, and that in this event it 
had the sanction of the apostle John, whose last years were spent 
in the city of Ephesus. 

Indeed, Clement of Alexandria, Irenzeus, and Tertullian, writ- 
ing a hundred years later, declare their acceptance of a tradition 
—‘handed down and committed to the custody of memory”— 
to the effect that the first bishops of Asia were appointed by 
John.” 


“For even at Alexandria, from the time of Mark the evangelist until the 
episcopate of Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters always named as 
bishop one of their own number, chosen by themselves and set in a more 
exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one 
of themselves whom they know to be diligent, and call him archdeacon.” 
(Jerome, Ep. to Evangelus, I.) 

*“Tisten to a tale which is not a tale but a narrative, handed down and 
committed to the custody of memory, about the apostle John. For when 
on the tyrant’s death he returned to Ephesus from the Isle of Patmos, he 
went away, being invited, to the contiguous territories of the nations, here 
to appoint bishops, there to set in order whole churches, there to ordain 
such as were marked out by the Spirit.” (Clement of Alexandria, Quis 
Dives, 42.) 

“For although Marcion rejects his Apocalypse, the order of the bishops 
[probably the “angels” of the Seven Churches of the Revelation] when traced 


Bishop: Origin of Office 265 


The tradition may be true. But we are not here on historic 
ground. 


2. THEORY OF AN ORIGINAL DIFFERENCE. 


About twenty-five years ago an almost wholly new theory of 
the single bishop’s origin began to challenge attention. It has 
engaged the serious consideration of all students of the subject— 
though, possibly, less because of its intrinsic merits than for the 
sake of the great scholars’ names under which it was put forth. 

According to this theory, the office of bishop and that of 
presbyter were not originally one and the same. On the contrary, 
from the very beginning of their official existence the bishop had 
charge of the finances of the congregation and the conduct of 
public worship, being assisted in the performance of his duties 
by the deacons, while the presbyter had charge of discipline— 
with no assistants. 

The germ out of which these ideas grew was furnished by the 
brilliant and lamented scholar, Dr. Edwin Hatch, in the Bampton 
Lectures for 1880 (“The Organization of the Early Christian 
Churches’). These Lectures emphasized very forcibly two quite 
distinct official functions in the early Church—namely, financial 
administration and discipline. They showed, more clearly per- 
haps than any previous treatise had shown, how imperative was 
the demand for the exercise of each of these two functions. And 
here, it is maintained, may be found the origin of the two titles, 
bishop and presbyter. That is to say, there was a body of officers 
in the Church who performed both these distinctly different func- 
tions; and hence they were called by two names. When the 
idea of financial administration was in the speaker’s or writer’s 
mind, they were called bishops; when the idea of discipline was 


up to their origin, will rest upon John as their author.” (Tertullian, “Against 
Marcion,” lv. 5. See also his “Prescription against Heretics,” 32.) 

“But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed 
with many who had seen Christ, but was also by apostles in Asia Minor 
appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early 
youth.” (Irenzus, “Against Heresies,” iii. 3, 4.) 

Lightfoot, “The Christian Ministry,” pp. 56-60. 


266 Christianity as Organized 


in his mind, they were called presbyters." So far the Bampton 
Lecturer. 

These Lectures, soon after their publication, fell into the hands 
of the famous young church historian, Dr. Adolph Harnack, 
who translated them into German, with additions of his own. 
Harnack, taking up the idea of the two ecclesiastical functions 
that Hatch had shown to be so important and so diverse as to 
give rise to the two names bishop and presbyter, carried it still 
further. He supposed not merely two functions, but two sep- 
arate and distinct offices, from the first. True, the same person 
might fill both offices, and no doubt in many instances did so. 
In fact, the bishop had, as such, a seat in the council of presby- 
ters; and hence all bishops were also presbyters, though we are 
not to suppose that all presbyters were bishops. But, however 
this might be, the two offices were not the same: the episcopate 
was always one office and the presbyterate another.* 

The considerations that have been urged in favor of this view 
are, baldly stated, as follows: (1) It does away with the necessity 


*“They [church officers] were known individually as well as collectively 
by a name that was common to the members of the Jewish ovvedpia and to 
the members of the Greek yepovoiae of Asia Minor—that of mpeoBirepo; they 
were also known—for I shall here assume what the weight of evidence has 
rendered practically indisputable—by the name éx/oxoro:. In their general ca- 
pacity as a governing body they were known by names which were in cur- 
rent use for a governing body: in their special capacity as administrators of 
church funds they were known by a name which was in current use for such 
administrators.” (Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” pp. 
38, 39.) 

*Harnack, in Encyclopedia Britannica, Art. “Presbyter ;” Discussions on the 
origin of the Christian ministry, in The Expositor, Vols. V. and VI., Third 
Series, by Harnack, Sanday, Salmon, Gore, and others. 

“The presbyters form the council of the community, constituting its gov- 
ernment; they have as their principal mission the care of souls—that is to 
say, a wholly moral and religious function. The bishops, on the contrary, 
direct the temporal (materielle) administration, inspect the general working 
of the society, see to the application of its statutes and regulations, and are 
brought by their very occupations to represent the community in its relations 
with the outside world; they have a function above all administrative and 
disciplinary. These differences are clear-cut enough not to permit us to 
identify the presbyters and the bishops.” (Réville, “Les Origines de L’ Epis- 
copat,” p. 313.) 


Bishop: Origin of Office 267 


of supposing two names for the same officer. (2) It is com- 
mended by the fact that bishops and deacons are uniformly men- 
tioned together both in the New Testament and in subsequent 
writings, as if they were somehow closely associated, while the 
same thing is not true of presbyters and deacons. (3) The chief 
financial officer of certain non-Christian societies was called in 
some instances an ézicxoros, and thus the choice of this name for 
the ecclesiastic financial administrator may be the better account- 
ed for. (4) Financial administration was a function of peculiar 
importance in the early Christian communities; for it meant the 
care of the numerous poor in an age when the Church was pre- 
eminently a charitable institution. Besides, it was intimately con- 
nected with the conduct of the love feast and the Lord’s Supper, 
at which the people’s offerings were made. Hence when the sin- 
gle ruler of the congregation appeared, it was to be expected that 
he should be called bishop rather than presbyter. 

To most students of the Christian ministry, however, the argu- 
ment seems to have proved unsatisfactory. Such considerations 
as the following have set themselves against it: (1) That there 
should be two appropriate names for the same officer, in a 
formative state of church organization, even if both are used 
more or less technically, needs no special explanation or apology. 
(2) The uniform use of the term bishop, instead of presbyter, 
in connection with deacons, may be without significance, though 
there is also a fitness in coupling the two ideas of overseer and 
servant. Besides, Polycarp (“To the Philippians,” 5) does use 
the terms presbyter and deacon together. (3) The evidence for 
the contemporary non-Christian éricxeros is not sufficient to 
make him more than “a rather shadowy and indefinite person- 
age.’ Then, too, there are stronger reasons in favor of the 
adoption of the term from the Septuagint’ than from the con- 


*As, for example, from such passages as the following: Numbers iv. 16, 
“Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, is overseer (éticxoroc): the oil for the light 
and the mixed incense and the daily sacrifice and the oil for anointing, the 
oversight (7 éxicxov#) of all the tabernacle and whatsoever is in it;” xxxi. 
14, “And Moses was angry with the overseers (ét toi¢ éxicxowoc) of the 


268 Christianity as Organized 


temporaneous Greco-Roman sources. (4) Apart from the im- 
portance of the financial feature (upon which Hatch is inclined 
to lay an overemphasis) in the early Christian churches, overseer 
would be a more fitting name than presbyter, for the single ruler. 
(5) The Christian bishop was from the first much more “a su- 
perintendent of persons’ than ‘“‘an overseer of funds.” 

Moreover, the advocate of this theory will be asked to show 
how it is that presbyters as well as bishops are charged with 
financial oversight in the New Testament.” 

And still again, this theory has not offered an acceptable ex- 
planation of certain close associations of the titles presbyter and 
bishop in the New Testament. For example, no explanation that 
has been proposed leaves it otherwise than unclear how presby- 
ters should in Acts xx. 17, 28 and Titus i. 5, 7 be distinctly called 
bishops. 

Briefly, the older view promises to commend itself still as the 
truer. 


3. THEORY OF ORIGINATION IN THE LorD’s SUPPER. 

The third theory is the following: The bishop’s office, which 
from the first was not a plural but a single episcopate, originated 
at the Lord’s table. It was at first simply the office of the admin- 
istration of the Lord’s Supper and the distribution of the gifts 
there offered. And as to the presbyters, they were not office- 
bearers at all, but only the honored old men of the Christian com- 
munity.” 

In case of there being a charismatically gifted man (an apostle 
or prophet or teacher) in the congregation, it was he who pre- 
sided at the Lord’s table and distributed the gifts; but lacking 
such a leader, the congregation elected a bishop to supply the de- 
ficiency. Accordingly when the Didache says, for instance, “Ap- 


forces.” (2 Kings xi. 15; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 12, 17; Neh. xi. 9, 14, 22; Isa. Ix. 
1735 Mae ast) 

Acts xi. 30. 

*This is the theory of Sohm in his “Kirchenrecht,” as interpreted with 
some modification and development by Lowrie in “The Church and Its Or- 
ganization.” 


Bishop: Origin of Office 269 


point for yourselves bishops and deacons, . . . for they too 
render you the service of the prophets and teachers” (c. 15), 
the meaning is not that the bishops and deacons as well as the 
prophets and teachers teach, but that they as well as the prophets 
and teachers preside and administer at the Lord’s Supper. But 
the bishop, taking the teacher’s place there as an administrative 
officer, was also expected to take his place, if possible, as a 
teacher—to do such teaching as he might be capable of. Indeed, 
the administration of the Eucharist was itself regarded as a 
teaching. So the episcopal office was from the beginning an 
office of teaching, and not (as Harnack and some others have 
regarded it) a purely administrative office. 

Now for the office of this teacher and administrator, this ‘‘bish- 
op,” there was always chosen one of the older men, which is all 
that is meant in the New Testament by presbyters of the Church. 

Bishops and presbyters, then, did not fill one and the same of- 
fice (as Jerome and Lightfoot would say), nor did they fill two 
different and disparate offices (as Harnack would say). There 
was but one office, that of bishop: the presbyters were simply the 
“honorables” of the Church, out of whose number the bishop was 
regularly elected. 

Furthermore, inasmuch as only one bishop, or presiding officer 
at the Lord’s table, was needed in a congregation, it is not to be 
supposed that there were more than one. And if it be asked, 
Why, then, are they spoken of in the New Testament in the plural 
(as they always are, with one apparent though not real excep- 
tion—1 Tim. iii. 2) the answer must be, that in all such cases 
it is implied that in the city to which reference is had (say, 
Ephesus or Philippi) there were more than one congregation, or 
church, and the bishops of them all collectively are intended.” 


1This last idea is one of Lowrie’s additions to the “Kirchenrecht:” “Sohm 
(pp. 116, 119) adds that as there were several bishops in one church no 
one of them could claim an exclusive right over the Eucharist. This may 
be a correct inference from the plurality of bishops; but, for my part, I find 
it difficult to conceive that such a state of things could have existed without 
disorder. . . . It seems to me more probable that the plurality of bishops 


270 Christianity as Organized 


In criticism of this theory one must be permitted to say that 
far more is assumed or obtained through hint or suggestion than 
is proved. 

Besides, the episcopal office, as here presented, is not large 
enough to fit the description of the bishop, that caretaker of the 
Church, in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. 

Again, it is distinctly stated in the New Testament that pres- 
byters were appointed, formally set apart, to their office.” Hence 
they could not have been merely “honorables,” unofficial elderly 
men. And the explanation offered—namely, that when presby- 
ters are spoken of in these passages as appointed (xeporovew, 
kabiornw) the meaning is that they, being already presbyters, were 
appointed bishops—is quite inadmissible. Neither the English 
translation nor the Greek text will bear such a construction. 

Still again, the theory is attended with a serious difficulty in 
connection with the rise of diocesan episcopacy in the cities. 
For it implies that, in this case, the outlying congregations were 
originally presided over by bishops, all of whom gave up their 
offices, apparently without objection or complaint, to the pres- 
byters who were later appointed in their place by the bishop of 
the mother congregation. Would they be likely to do so?* 


corresponded to a plurality of assemblies, which were more or less definitely 
distinguished.” (Lowrie, “The Church and Its Organization,” p. 367, n.) 

*Acts xiv. 23; Titus i. 5, 6. 

*“T do not pretend to explain how the extra bishops were got rid of; but 
whatever the process may have been, the accomplishment could have hardly 
been more difficult than the subsequent absorption of the country bishops in 
the presbytery, and their deposition to a rank lower than that of the city 
presbyter.” (Lowrie, “The Church and Its Organization,” p. 307.) To the 
ordinary student of church history the former “accomplishment” would prob- 
ably be considered decidedly more difficult than the latter. 

“Starting with the assumption of the original identity of bishops and pres- 
byters, the development of the single episcopate is left an insoluble mystery; 


for, leaving all facts aside, and giving the freest rein to the imagination, it . 


is impossible to propose any plausible process whereby, in the short space of 
time allowed for the revolution, one of the bishops could have been elevated 
to a position relative to the rest like that of Christ above his Apostles.” 
(Ibid., p. 294.) To some minds a still freer rein to the imagination would 
be required in order to propose a plausible process in which in this and that 


——— 


‘a Ee 


Bishop: Origin of Office 271 


4. TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LoRD’s SUPPER IN THE DEVEL- 
OPMENT OF THE EPISCOPATE. 


Here, then, are three theories put forward to explain the origin 
of the single episcopate—one very old, the other two of recent 
date. After the most careful and open-minded study, we shall 
probably be unable to see in either of the latter two the truth 
value which it possesses in the eyes of its advocates. But a lead- 
ing fact to which they both call attention—namely, the signifi- 
cance of the Lord’s Supper in the development of the episcopal 
office—seems worthy of greater emphasis than has been given 
it in the older theory. 

Let us look at this for a moment. The Lord’s Supper was 
the distinctive rite of Christian congregational worship. More- 
over, it was fitting and expedient that some one person should 
preside at its celebration. Was it not the custom for the head of 
a family to break bread at table, returning thanks to the Divine 
Giver, and offer it to his household and his guests? Did not our 
Lord himself at the Last Supper take the bread and wine, having 
offered thanks, and give them to his disciples?’ Therefore both 
the breaking of the bread and the offering of the thanksgiving 
(which was so prominent a function as to give its most common 
name, the Eucharist, to the Supper) would probably belong to 
the president’s office. And would he not be acting in the Mas- 
ter’s own place, representing him? 

But who should this president be? A prophetic teacher, no 
doubt, if one were present in the congregation; for the govern- 
ment of the churches in the early period was distinctly charis- 
matic. But in the second century, it may be supposed, the con- 
gregation was often without a prophetic teacher. In such a case, 
what could be better than to elect a president to take his place? 

Then, too, the man who presided on this supreme occasion of 
worship and communion would most naturally be intrusted with 


city of Christendom a plurality of bishops could have been reduced to one 
single bishop “in the short space of time allowed for the revolution.” 
*Mark xiv. 22, 23; Luke xxii. 10. 


272 Christianity as Organized 


the church’s property. For this property consisted not, as in 
later times, of grounds and buildings, but of regularly contrib- 
uted supplies for the needy—that is to say, of the freewill offer- 
ings of food that were brought to the Lord’s table. These, to- 
gether with one or more books of Scripture—which, in some 
cases, were doubtless owned by a congregation—seem to have 
been the whole of the Church’s “wealth” in those earliest days. 
There it lay—brought to the meeting-room, placed upon the 
Lord’s table, to be distributed among the poor, whether these 
were officers or simply members of the church.’ 

Again, the presidency at the Lord’s Supper would tend to carry 
with it the exercise of discipline. For the most commonly in- 
flicted penalty was exclusion from the Lord’s table; and it might 
easily become the custom (and in due course of time the Jaw) 
that this penalty should be both adjudged and executed by the 
presiding officer of the eucharistic assembly. 

Now the combination of these three functions, the liturgic, the 
financial, and the judicial—leadership in worship, the treasure- 
ship of the church, the exercise of discipline—constituted the 


“When the reader of the Scriptures has ceased,” says Justin in a classic 
passage, “the president orally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these 
good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, 
when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the 
president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgiving according to his 
ability, and the people assent by saying Amen. And there is a distribution to 
each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to 
those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are 
well-to-do and willing give what each thinks fit, and what is collected is de- 
posited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows and those in 
sickness or want, the prisoners and strangers among us.” 

Somewhat later, references are made to contributions in money as well 
as in kind: “We have our treasure-chest. . . . On the monthly day, if 
he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and 
only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts 
are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund.” (Tertullian, Apol. XX XIX.) 

“Tf thou art not able to cast anything considerable into the Corban [offer- 
ing], yet at least bestow upon the strangers one, or two, or five mites.” 
(Const. Apost. II. v. 36.) 

This development may be regarded as inevitable. Compare the Jews’ of» 
ferings at the altar and at the treasury of the Temple. 


+. 


Bishop: Origin of Office 273 


highest office in the congregation. Shall it be filled by several 
office-bearers in rotation? Rather let one of them, the most 
highly gifted and trustworthy, be regularly charged with this 
responsibility. Let the office be made permanent. At all events, 
it seems to have become so, as a matter of fact, in the middle 
of the second century. 

Now, then, what was the situation, as thus conceived? In the 
first place, there was needed a presiding officer of the presby- 
ters, “to remedy schism” (as Jerome says), and to secure a more 
efficient executive. In the second place, there was needed a pre- 
siding officer of the congregation in time of worship, to take 
charge of the administration of the Lord’s Supper and of the 
people’s offerings (as Justin Martyr shows). But these two 
little presidencies were similar in their requirements, and might 
be filled by the same man. Accordingly the same man was ap- 
pointed to both, either by the presbyters or by presbyters and 
people conjointly; and thus he became the single pastoral over- 
seer of the congregation. So the two needs, we may imagine, 
called unitedly for the one congregational bishop. 


Shall we listen to still another attempted solution of the ques- 
tion—namely, that the original Apostles ordained the first bish- 
ops, conferring upon them the exclusive power of ordatning oth- 
ers, and thus constituting a line of ordinations for all bishops 
throughout the subsequent ages? 

This is the theory of ‘apostolic succession,’ 
the subject of the next two chapters. 

18 


’ 


which will form 


XI. 


UNITY: APOSTOLIC SUCCESS ime 


Tue phrase “apostolic succession” is used in two principal 
senses. It may mean that from the days of the Apostles there 
has been a threefold ministry in the Church—deacons, presbyters, 
and bishops; that the bishops occupy the office of general over- 
sight to which the original Apostles were appointed by the Lord; 
that they have been ordained to their office in a line of descent 
reaching back to the Apostles themselves, with authority to or- 
dain their successors even unto the end of time; and that this 
therefore is the only regular and orderly mode of church govern- 
ment, and ought to be universally followed. 

The advocate of this theory will not necessarily assert that 
there have been no breaks in the line of episcopal ordinations. 
He may regard it as in the highest degree probable that such ir- 
regularities have occurred. But this does not invalidate the 
claim of the apostolic succession, as he understands it. Because 
this succession is essentially not tactual but corporate, not person- 
al but institutional. That is to say, if he can show that it has 
been uniformly maintained in any church from the beginning, 
despite temporary irregularities, actual or possible, in the matter 
of ordination to the episcopate, such a church is truly regular, 
catholic, apostolic.” 

But a like claim must not be made for any other church. The 
lack of this kind of episcopate leaves other religious bodies sim- 


“They declare that ‘it is evident to all men, diligently reading Holy Scrip- 
ture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these 
orders of ministers in Christ’s Church—Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.’ 
While they do not assert that this arrangement is the result of a categorical 
command of Christ, still they hold it to be of so potent obligation that it 
may not be changed except for weightier reasons than have as yet been 
offered.” (McConnell, “History of the American Episcopal Church,” pp. 
174, 175.) 


(274) 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 275 


ply “religious bodies,” or at best “societies of Christians.” Only 
through a distressing misnomer can they be called churches. 
Hence their ministers are not invited to preach or to take any 
part in the conduct of worship and the administration of sacra- 
ments in an episcopal church. This theory, laying supreme em- 
phasis upon the antiquity and continuity of the bishop’s office, 
and not upon his personal derivation of authority through an ab- 
solutely unbroken tactual line of descent from the Apostles, is 
preferably known by the newer and less definite name of the 
“historic episcopate.’” 

The other theory is purely personal, derivative, and sacerdotal. 
The Twelve Apostles possessed within themselves all ministerial 
powers and offices, as a bestowment direct from Christ; and by 
detaching these in different measures, as rays of light from the 
sun or streams from a fountain, they created three classes of 
officers in the Church—namely, deacons, priests, and bishops; 
to the bishops only they gave the power of ordination; bishops 
of the present day have come down in an unbroken line from the 
Apostles, and through them from Christ himself; they are there- 
by invested with supreme governing power and with exclusive 
ordaining power in the Church; and the highest significance of 
their successional standing is, that it constitutes them a channel 
of actual divine grace received through the original Apostles and 
their successors, and by these Apostles immediately from Christ. 
Accordingly by the laying on of hands in confirmation they can 
impart “that gift of the Holy Ghost which is the essence of the 


*“The bishops at Chicago and at Lambeth spoke of the ‘historic episco- 
pate. That phrase has room enough for all varieties of opinion. It is the 
assertion of a fact. There is such a form of ecclesiastical government, which 
exists to-day and has existed from the beginning of the Christian Church, 
as the historic episcopate. There is an institutional theory about it, which 
they may hold who will. There is also a successional theory about it, which 
they may hold who will. Each of these theories can quote texts out of the 
Bible and out of the Prayer Book. But neither the doctrine of apostolic 
evolution nor the doctrine of apostolic succession is set forth by authority. 
The Church, instead of asserting that our way is either the best way or the 
only way, is content to affirm the simple fact, easily tested by history, that 
ours is the old way.” (Hodges, “The Episcopal Church,” p. 35.) 


276 Christianity as Organized 


Christian life.” Also, by the laying on of hands in ordination, 
they can impart that gift of the Holy Ghost, that “grace of Holy 
Orders,” which makes men not simply ministers but priests, em- 
powered to offer up the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice, and in their 
turn to impart grace to those who receive this sacrament at their 
hands. In a word, the Christian ministry is, in the literal sense 
of the word, a pricsthood, and there is a divinely ordained order 
of bishop-priests by whom only it can be perpetuated and gov- 
erned. 

Without this form of the episcopate, then, there can be no 
valid Christian ministry nor Lord’s Supper, no covenanted grace, 
no Church. Imagine all the bishop-priests to die—say, by the 
hand of violence, in time of persecution—and though all the rest 
of the officers and all the laity should survive and be perpetuated 
through the coming years, the Church of Christ would be extinct 
onearth. There would only remain “bodies of Christians,” with 
no valid ministry or sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or covenant- 
ed grace, and capable therefore of doing only such service for the 
coming of the kingdom of God as—mere bodies of Christians 
are doing to-day! 

This is the theory of apostolic succession that is held by the 
Ritualists of the Church of England and of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church.” It includes the whole claim of the historic epis- 


1“The Apostles, thus invested with the plenitude of ministerial power, de- 
tached from themselves in the form of distinct grades or orders of ministry, 
so much as was needed, at successive epochs, for building up and supporting 
the Church.” (Liddon, “Clerical Life and Work,” p. 293.) 

“That the special priestly powers descend by due imposition of hands 
from the Apostles, and may not be invaded without sacrilege, we hold as 
one of the chief pillars of the constitution of the Church of Christ.” (Mo- 
berly, “The Administration of the Holy Spirit,” pp. 201, 202.) 

“Under the Christian dispensation the succession to the ministry is 
a succession communicated from Christ through the Apostles by the gift of 
the Holy Ghost, in connection with an external individual call given by 
those who have themselves received it.” (Seabury, “Introduction to the 
Study of Ecclesiastical Polity,” p. 87.) i 

“What man receives in Christ is the very life of God. Here, again, each 
Christian receives the gift as an endowment of his own personal life. . . . 
But the individual life can receive this fellowship with God only through 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 277 


copate, and much more. Therefore it alone will call for con- 
sideration in our present inquiry. 


1. Irs History IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 


Let us bear in mind that apostolic succession, as thus defined, 
has never been so strongly emphasized by any church as by the 
school of the English and the American Ritualists. The Ortho- 
dox Eastern Church claims this succession, but not so much on 
the ground of external derivation from the Apostles as on that 
of a continuity of apostolic teaching. This Church takes ortho- 
doxy as evidence of the true succession rather than the true 
succession as evidence of orthodoxy. And its theologians teach 
that, in the case of heresy or schism, the “grace of holy orders” 
tends to decline, and may be wholly lost." The Roman Church 
claims this succession distinctly, unequivocally. But it includes 
the bishop in the order of priesthood, than which it acknowledges 
no higher “holy order.” Moreover, it rests the commission of 
both bishops and priests upon the immediate authority of the 
Church—that is to say, of the pope—rather than upon their 
tactual apostolic descent. The Church of England claims the 
“succession” in the ecclesiastic, or institutional, but not in the 
personal and sacerdotal, sense. The personal and sacerdotal dog- 
ma does, it is true, prevail to a large extent in this Church; but 
not in her Articles nor Ordinal nor Homilies is it taught. Nor 
do either the Low Churchmen or the Broad Churchmen be- 
lieve it. 

The fact is that this High-Church, or sacerdotal, theory of 
apostolic succession does not seem to have been originally ad- 
vocated in the English Church. Very early, indeed, there were 
two schools or parties in the Church—the Anglicans, who were 
favorable to the episcopal office, and the Puritans, who would 


membership in the one body and by dependence upon social sacraments of 
regeneration, of confirmation, of communion, of absolution—of which or- 
dained ministers are the appointed instruments.” (Gore, “Church and Min- 
istry,” pp. 84, 85.) 

*Fortescue, “The Orthodox Eastern Church,” p. 261. 


278 Christianity as Organized 


have discarded it. The reign of Elizabeth was a period of con- 
troversy between these two parties. And in this long contention 
the Puritan position—as represented, for example, by its chief 
champion, Thomas Cartwright—was that of the divine right of 
presbytery. This form of government and no other—so Cart- 
wright held—was scriptural and obligatory. The Anglican po- 
sition, on the contrary—as represented by Cartwright’s chief 
opponent, Archbishop Whitgift—was that of ecclesiastic free- 
dom. The Scriptures—so Whitgift held—make no particular 
form of government obligatory upon the Church; and as to epis- 
copacy, it is a primitive polity, agreeable to the Scriptures, al- 
ready established in the realm of England, and therefore not to 
be abandoned. But that this episcopal polity is a universally ob- 
ligatory institute of Christ, or that it is necessary to the very 
existence of the Church, was not maintained—only that it is 
scriptural and expedient. 

In entire harmony with this view are the Articles of Religion 
in whatever they declare concerning the Church, its ministers, 
its ordinances, or any other subject. Take, for example, the 
definition of the Church as given in Article XIX.: “The [appro- 
priately, a]* Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, 
in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacra- 
ments be duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance, in 
all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.’ Prob- 


*It has been conjectured that this inaccuracy arose from the inattentive 
use of the definite instead of the indefinite article in translating from the 
Latin—in which language the Articles of Religion are supposed to have 
been written—the words Ecclesia Christi visibilis. But the perpetuation of 
so obvious an error is rather surprising. 

*Burnet, in his exposition of the twenty-third Article of Religion, says 
that if in a case of real necessity a company of Christians should frame a 
“regulated constitution,” appointing ministers and forming a church of their 
own, “this is not condemned or annulled by this Article, . . . whatever 
some hotter spirits have thought.” “We are very sure,” he continues, “that 
not only those who penned the Articles, but the body of this Church for 
about half an age after did, notwithstanding these irregularities, acknowledge 
the foreign churches so constituted to be true churches in all the essentials 
of a church, though they had been irregularly formed and continued still to 
be in an imperfect state.” (“Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles”) 


—— 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 279 


ably no bishop of the time held any other view of the Church 
and its government." Accordingly during this period the Re- 
formed Churches of the Continent were admitted into fraternal 
relations with the English Church, and their ministerial orders 
recognized as valid.“ Ministers who had been ordained presby- 
ters in these churches, as also in the Church of Scotland, were 


received into the English Church and appointed without reordi- 
nation to various charges.” 


*Hooker was a strenuous upholder of the apostolic origin of the episco- 
pacy. Nevertheless he held it to be subject, like any other matter of gov- 
ernment, to the judgment of the Church, which, for good and sufficient rea- 
sons, might change or discontinue it. For example, in his exposition of 
Jerome’s famous assertion of the origin of the episcopacy by elevation from 
the presbyterate, he says: “Forasmuch as the whole body of the Church hath 
power to alter, with general consent and upon necessary occasions, even the 
positive laws of the Apostles, if there be no command to the contrary; and 
it manifestly appears to her that change of times hath taken away the very 
reasons of God’s first institution, as by sundry examples may be most clearly 
proved; what laws the universal Church might change and doth not, if they 
have long continued without any alteration, it seemeth that St. Jerome 
ascribeth continuance of such positive laws, though instituted by God him- 
self, to the judgment of the Church.” (“Ecc. Polity,” Bk. VIL, sec. 5. See 
also sec. 14.) 

“The idea of the exclusive validity of episcopal orders was not generally 
entertained at that time by the great majority of Churchmen even in En- 
gland.” (McConnell, “Hist. of the American Episcopal Church,” p. 41.) 

The fact is not denied by High-Church writers, however greatly its sig- 
nificance may fail of their appreciation: “One may recognize that as a fact 
the Anglican divines of the seventeenth century admitted exceptions to the 
necessity of episcopal ordination without either thinking their teaching on 
this head seriously dangerous, or on the other hand regarding it as quite 
adequate to ancient standards.” (Gore, “The Mission of the Church,” p. 
116.) 

*“Such were Whittingham, Dean of Durham, and Cartwright, Professor of 
Divinity at Cambridge. It is doubtful whether any prelate of the English 
Church in Elizabeth’s reign held the jure divino theory of Episcopacy.” (D.S. 
Schaff, in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Art. “Episcopacy.”) The usual 
statement has been that Bancroft, soon to be made a bishop, did in his 
famous sermon at St. Paul’s Cross, toward the close of Elizabeth’s reign, 
advocate the jure divino theory of the episcopacy. But even this fact does 
not seem to have been placed beyond doubt. Henry Hallam could find no 
such claim set forth in the sermon: “The divine right of episcopacy is said 
to have been laid down by Bancroft in his sermon at St. Paul’s Cross in 


280 Christianity as Organized 


The further story, which cannot here be followed, is still the 
story of an open question, with its ever-increasing literature— 
the High Churchmen upholding the episcopacy as necessary to 
the very existence of the Church, the Low Churchmen and Broad 
Churchmen regarding it as necessary to the Church’s well-being 
only. It is true that the methods of historic inquiry have im- 
proved, and the materials of this particular inquiry have in- 
creased in the last three hundred years; so that Hatch and Gore, 
for example, enjoy some advantages over Cartwright and Whit- 
gift. And this has proved altogether favorable to the Low- 
Church view.’ 

But externalism, romanticism, zestheticism, the sense of mystic 
symbolism, the love of power, the desire somehow to make real 
to oneself the good effects of one’s ministrations, all these are 
more attracted by the other view; and these are no mean antag- 
onists of either scholarship or common sense. A Sir Walter 
Scott would win many a mind to whom an Archbishop Whately 
could only appeal in vain. Moonlight has a charm of its own— 
however inferior to walk or work by. Is it the well-reasoned 
conclusions of the logical intellect to which men are most pas- 
sionately devoted? It is often some creation of the idealizing 
faculty, or some fascinating visible fact, or some overmastering 
claim. And very easily may such intruders as these learn to 
sidetrack a human judgment. 


1558. But I do not find anything in it to that effect.” (“The Constitutional 
History of England,” Vol. IL. ch. vii, p. 387, n.) 

The same author adds the note that “Laud had been reproved by the 
University of Oxford in 1604 for maintaining, in his exercise for bachelor 
of divinity, that there could be no true church without bishops, which was 
thought to cast a bone of contention between the Church of England and 
the Reformed upon the Continent.” 

Compare the statement of Green the English historian: “For the first time 
[by the Act of Uniformity, 1662] since the Reformation all orders save those 
conferred by the hands of bishops were legally disallowed.” (“History of 
the English People,” Vol. IIL, p. 361.) 

1The preponderance of scholarly judgment in the Church of England is 
decidedly contrary to the High-Church claim—witness such names as Light- 
foot, Westcott, Hatch, Hort. “On the question of organization I imagine 
we agree more than we differ; but some of your language is not such as J 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 281 


Especially notable is the creative power of antiquity, the magic 
of many-centuried custom, in loyal and idealizing minds— 
through which it is no uncommon thing for a pagan people to 
dream their line of kings descended from the gods. 

The “‘visible fact”—such, for instance, as an institution, a cus- 
tom, a succession of honored officers—let it be freely granted, 
may enshrine some great truth against which the “reasoned con- 
clusions of the logical intellect’? will have nothing to offer. It 
will thus be serving a most useful purpose. By all means let us 
have it. Let the truths of religion be presented to the world in 
the concrete—in institutions, offices, object lessons, figures of 
speech, various symbols, and, above all, in personal Christian 
lives. Was not this a method of the Teacher who knew, as no 
one else, “what was in man’ and how to reach that inner self? 
In the same way will his teaching Church uniformly bear its 
messages to men. Only let it make sure always that the message 
is indeed from him—that truth, not fiction, finds embodiment in 
the symbolic form or fact. For fiction no less than truth, idola- 
try no less than Christianity, teaches through symbols. 


2. THE SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT PRO AND Con. 


The argument for apostolic succession is ecclesiastic rather 
than scriptural. It is on no better than strained relations with 
any portion of Scripture—at home with none. Nevertheless, it 
cannot be excused from appearing face to face with the witness 
of the New Testament. Indeed, the inquiry might here not im- 
properly both begin and end; for the tremendous claim of High 
Anglicanism can be acknowledged on no lower authoritative tes- 
timony than that of some well-authenticated teaching of Jesus 
or his Apostles." 


would naturally use. I quite go with you in condemning the refusal of fel- 
lowship with sister churches merely because they make no use of some ele- 
ments of organization assumed to be jure divino essential.” (Letter from 
Dr. Hort to Dr. Hatch, quoted in Fairbairn, “Catholicism,” p. 417.) 

1“Thus Estius, no mean schoolman, handling this very question of the 
difference of bishops and presbyters, very fairly quits the Scriptures, and 
betakes himself to other weapons. ‘But that bishops by a Divine right are 


282 Christianity as Organized 


Its Scripture argument, briefly stated, is the following: (1) 
Christ chose out of the whole number of disciples twelve Apos- 
tles, to whom, it is assumed, he gave supreme governmental pow- 
ers; (2) in the parable of the household he asks, “Who then is 
the faithful and wise steward whom his lord shall set over his 
household, to give them their portion of food in due season ?’”* 
showing that there are to be officers as well as ordinary mem- 
bers in the Church; (3) he promised to Simon Peter “the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven,” and this means that Peter is to have 
authority, which is also conferred upon the other Apostles,’ to 
give legislative decisions in the Church; (4) in the last days of 
his ministry and after the Resurrection, he still dealt with the 
Apostles as representative disciples,” and the commission then 
given them would seem to have been given to an abiding apos- 
tolate destined to be permanent unto the end of the world; (5) 
he bade Simon Peter tend (7oéuawve) his flock, which includes both 
teaching and governing;® (6) he conferred the apostolic office 
upon Paul, which implies a plenary authority to teach and to 
govern—as shown, for instance, in his relation to the Corinthian 
Church; (7) this Apostle had power to deliver an offender to 
Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” and (8) to appoint Tim- 
othy and Titus apostolic delegates; (g) James was presiding 
officer, or bishop, of the church in Jerusalem;* (10) the Apostles 
ordained “the Seven,” and Paul and Barnabas ordained pres- 
byters in Asia Minor; (11) Apostles laid their hands upon cer- 
tain baptized persons to impart to them the gift of the Holy 


superior to presbyters although not so clear from the Scriptures, neverthe- 
less can, from other writings, be sufficiently proved.’ Ingenuously said, how- 
ever; but all the difficulty is, how a jus divintm should be proved when 
men leave the Scriptures. . . . We follow therefore the scent of the 
game into this wood of antiquity, wherein it will be easier to lose ourselves 
than to find that which we are upon the pursuit of, a jus divinum of any par- 
ticular form of government.” (Stillingfleet, “Irenicum,” Part II., c. 6, sec. 16.) 


*Luke xii. 41-43. ®t Cor. v. 3-5. 

?Matt. xvi. 18, 19. "7? Timi. 33 Ditusaase 
; *John xx. 22,23. ®Acts xv. 

4Matt. xxvi. 26-30; xxviii. 16-20. * Acts vi. 


5John xxi. 16. Acts xiv. 23. 


———————— oe 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 283 


Spirit, which is the grace by which the Christian life is lived;* 
(12) the Apostles and presbyters in council decided the question 
sent from Antioch concerning the reception of Gentile converts ;* 
and Paul had power to impart a definite ministerial gift through 
the imposition of hands—as he did to Timothy.° 

What is here pleaded for, it would be well to remember, is 
the sacerdotal idea raised to its highest power. The proposition 
is that the Apostles were priests, empowered by Christ to impart 
to men in the sacraments “the grace by which Christians live;” 
and that, being thus constituted priest-lords, they were also in- 
vested by Christ with supreme authority to govern the Church, 
and were commanded to transmit this authority through ordi- 
nation to the bishops, who were to be their successors throughout 
all subsequent generations; and that the bishops, likewise, and all 
those whom they should ordain to the priesthood, should have 
the power to impart saving grace to men in the sacraments; that, 
accordingly, when presbyters undertake to ordain to the ministry 
of Christ they are guilty of sacrilege, and those whom they or- 
dain are not ministers of Christ but only ministerial pretenders 
acting in violation of his will and word. 

Do the proofs support this amazing proposition? Under the 
slightest scrutiny their insufficiency is manifest: (1) The Apos- 
tles were sent forth as Christ’s chief witnessing preachers, to dis- 
ciple all nations, and not as the supreme rulers of the Church 
and the ordainers of others to such supreme rulership; (2) un- 
questionably there are to be officers as well as ordinary members 
in the Church; (3) the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” were 
given to the Apostles, but without any hint of their official trans- 
mission to others, and, moreover, they are also given to the Chris- 
tian congregation ;* (4) the Apostles’ commission and the prom- 
ised presence of Christ unto the end of the world offer no evi- 


Acts viii. 14-18; xix. 1-7. *Acts xv. 

so cim. 1.6, 7: 

I have here followed, with only a slight change of order, the Scripture ar- 
gument for the sacerdotal succession in Gore’s “The Church and the Minis- 
try”—the most complete that I know. 

“Matt. xviii. 16-20. 


284 Christiamty as Organized 


dence for the perpetuation, tactually or otherwise, of either their 
particular office or their jurisdiction; (5) to shepherd the flock 
of Christ, teaching and governing, is every pastor’s duty; (6) 
Paul exerted no authority in the Corinthian Church, or in any 
other, except such as would be reasonably and freely accorded 
him in his evangelic office, as an Apostle of Jesus, “not a whit 
behind the very chiefest Apostles,” and a founder, chief pastor, 
and inspired teacher of Christian churches—or such as would be 
accorded any great-minded missionary evangelist and pastor in 
our own age; (7) there is not even a suggestion that the Apos- 
tle’s power of authoritative judgment, delivering the scandalous 
Corinthian church-member to physical suffering for the sake of 
restoration to spiritual health, was a transmissible power, nor is 
it as a matter of fact an episcopal power in the present day; (8) 
the appointment of apostolic delegates for a temporary purpose 
makes no approach to the transmission of sacerdotal and legisla- 
tive functions to an age-long line of successors; (9g) the presiden- 
cy of James in the Church at Jerusalem was such as any Chris- 
tian congregation might believe in and enjoy; (10) that Apostles 
ordained presbyters and deacons to their office proves nothing for 
an apostolic sacerdotal succession; (11) the gifts of the Holy 
Spirit given through the laying on of Apostles’ hands were mirac- 
ulous gifts, attested by outward signs, such as the speaking with 
tongues, and not the grace of God by which the Christian life is 
lived; (12) Timothy’s ministerial gift was given him “through 
prophecy” as well as “through the laying on of” the Apostles’ 
hands: the preposition is the same (4) in both cases. 

But it may be well to examine this argument from Timothy’s 
ordination a little more closely. As to what was the particular 
ministry to which he was set apart, we are not informed. It may 
have been that of a presbyter in Lystra;’ or, as seems more prob- 
able, that of a traveling evangelist. Just as certain prophets and 
teachers of the church in Antioch had recently laid their hands 
upon Paul and Barnabas and sent them forth as missionaries, so 
may Paul and the presbyters have sent Timothy forth. 


*Acts xiv. 23; Xvi. I-5. 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 285 


It is not the particular ministry, however, but the ministerial 
gift with which we are here concerned. We notice, then, that 
the relation of prophecy to this ministerial gift could only have 
been that of recognition or testimony—the prophet declaring the 
gift (x@piepa) of the Holy Spirit which was in this well-instructed 
young Christian. The same, it may be believed, was the rela- 
tion of the imposition of the Apostle’s (and the presbyter’s) 
hands to this gift—namely, not that of a cause or a medium, but 
that of a recognition and testimony. The Apostle and presbyters 
thereby declared that qualification for the ministry which had al- 
ready been given to Timothy as an immediate gift from God— 
just as the imposition of the Apostles’ hands upon “the Seven,” 
who were already “full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom,” was 
not causative but declarative of their fitness for the ministry of 
tables for which they had been selected.* 

Or, if it be supposed that by Timothy’s ministerial gift is 
meant a special illumination of the Spirit which had been re- 
ceived at the time of the laying on of hands, still here is no 
sacerdotal or official impartation of God’s Spirit. Let us pray 
that the same anointing from the Holy One for spiritual vision 
and the opening of blinded eyes may be received at our own or 
any other ordination to Christ’s holy ministry. For “who is suf- 
ficient for these things?’ That flame of Christly love caught 
from the altar of God, that inner baptism from the ascended 
Christ for sacrifice and service, may be realized in the selfsame 
hour of one’s setting apart to the ministry of redeeming grace. 
And it may abide even unto the end. 

At the very time of receiving baptism or the Lord’s Supper, 
to instance some similar experiences, one may receive through 
the spirit of faith (not ex opere operato) an inward conscious 
revelation of the love of God in Christ. And why may there 


*Acts vi. 6. 

“On the day following, the Conference [the first Methodist Conference, 
1744] was opened, with solemn prayer, a sermon by Charles Wesley, and the 
baptism of an adult, who then and there found peace with God.” (Tyerman, 
“Life of Wesley,” Vol. I., p. 443.) 

“Then I began to pray again and read the Scriptures; and one Sunday 


286 Christianity as Organized 


not be the same experience at the time of ordination to the Chris- 
tian ministry? It may be and has been, again and again. “When 
the bishop laid his hands upon my head, if my vile heart doth 
not deceive me, I offered up my whole spirit, soul, and body to 
the service of God’s sanctuary. . . . I can call heaven and 
earth to witness. . . . I gave myself up to be a martyr for 
Him who hung upon the cross for me;” such was the testimony 
of George Whitefield.” And was not this realization of entire 
self-committal to the service of God in the preaching of the gos- 
pel a ministerial gift? Was it not a spirit of power and love 
which he might well “stir up” from time to time, and of which 
his whole after-life proved the reality? | 

Or, once again, supposing for the argument’s sake that there 
came upon Timothy, through the laying on of hands, some cha- 
rism of the Holy Spirit—as in the case of the Samaritan” and 
the Ephesian converts’—will it be maintained that therefore a 
like gift of the Spirit is imparted to candidates for the ministry 
by bishops of to-day? We know that it is not. The signs are 
nowhere in evidence. 


3. TESTIMONY OF THE SuB-AposTOLic AGE—IGNATIUS. 


The testimony of the sub-apostolic age on this subject con- 
firms that of the New Testament. The bishops, appearing no- 
where as officially superior to the presbyters till the time of Ig- 
natius, were not spoken of by him as successors of the Apostles. 
They were represented as standing in the place of Christ or of 
God the Father, and the presbyters in the place of the Apostles* 


I called at Whitehall Chapel, where the sacrament was going to be deliv- 
ered. I went to the table with trembling limbs and a heavy heart; but no 
sooner had I received than I found power to believe that Jesus Christ had 
shed his blood for me,.and that God for his sake had forgiven my offenses. 
Then was my heart filled with love to God and man; and since then sin 
hath not had dominion over me.” (The personal testimony of a converted 
soldier, in John Nelson’s Journal, p. 17.) 

1Southey, “Life of Wesley,” Vol. I., 145. 

*Acts viii. 14-10. SActs xix. 1-6. 

“While your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in 
the place of the assembly of the Apostles.” (To the Magnesians, 6.) “Ye 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 287 


—not, however, through a tactual succession. But the fact that 
bishops were not represented as in a tactual succession is well- 
nigh conclusive proof that they were not so regarded. For if Ig- 
natius, in his unceasing insistence upon the authority of the bish- 
op, could have declared to the Ephesians or the Magnesians or 
the Trallians or any others, that this church officer received his 
office by direct transmission from Christ through the Apostles 
and their successors, it is, to say the least, in the extremest de- 
gree unlikely that he should have failed to avail himself of such 
a plea. What counter consideration could have laid upon his 
pen the spell of so strange a reticence?” 

Neither is there a word in this age concerning the tactual 
transmission of grace. 

We have found Irenzus, toward the close of the second cen- 
tury, expressing his belief in a doctrinal succession. He refers 
to the church at Rome as the most notable example of it. The 
Gnostics, against whom he is arguing, professed to be teaching 
doctrines of the Apostles which they had received through tra- 
ditions and apostolic writings in their possession. Irenzus de: 
nies their claim, and challenges them to put forward the proof. 
Then he goes on to show where, in his judgment, the true tradi- 
tion of apostolic doctrine may be found—namely, in churches 
founded by Apostles, and preserving through a succession of 


are subject to the bishops as to Jesus Christ; . . . should also be subject 
to the presbyters as to the Apostles of Jesus Christ.” (To the Trallians, 2.) 
“Let all reverence the bishop as Jesus Christ, . . . and the presbyters as 


the sanhedrin of God, and assembly of the Apostles.” (Jbid., 3.) 

And of himself this bishop of Antioch says: “I do not command you ag 
if I were Peter or Paul: they were Apostles.” (To the Romans, 4.) Or 
again: “Shall I . . . reach such a height of self-esteem that . . . I 
should issue commands to you as if I were an Apostle?” (To the Tral- 
lians, 3.) 

*Bishop Thomas F. Gailor has said that “Ignatius is so intent on the 
authority of the bishops that he does not stop their succession with the 
Apostles, but traces it back to Christ himself.” (In “Church Reunion,” p. 
249, n.) I do not find a word of Ignatius that even suggests a tracing of a 
succession of bishops back either to the Apostles or to Christ. The idea of 
an episcopal succession is simply foreign to his Letters, 


288 Christianity as Organized 


bishops (whom he also calls presbyters) that original depositum 
of truth. Here in the church at Rome, and in other apostolic 
churches, was a line of chief pastors which Irenzeus believed to 
reach back to the apostolic age. This he regarded as the Chris- 
tian guarantee of pure doctrine." But of a tactual or sacerdotal 
line of chief officers and teachers Irenzeus knew nothing. 

It may be worthy of a parenthetic remark, that the Roman or 
the Orthodox Eastern or the English Church cannot consistently 
entertain the Irenzean idea of the true succession of doctrine; 
because each of these three churches acknowledges a regular suc- 
cession of bishops in either one or both of the others, and at the 
samne time charges them both with heresy. 

Passing on, then, from Ignatius and Irenzeus, we continue to 
ask, At what time and under what circumstances was the High- 
Church bishop’s claim as to his origin first put forth? Not from 
the beginning. All the available evidence tends to show that it 
was not for perhaps three generations after the episcopal office 
began, here and there, to be instituted. The claim was not used 
to help create the office, but to help justify and perpetuate its 
existence as an already familiar and universal institution. 

A similar historic example may be shown in the gigantic fiction - 
of the divine right of kings. Did a certain man stand up among 
his unorganized fellows, in some “wondrous mother-age” of the 
rude and shadowy olden time, and undertake to prove to them 
that he was chosen by the gods whom they feared to be their 
king? We cannot think so. On the contrary, some strong man 
stood up, under favoring circumstances, and was accepted by the 
clan or tribe as their chiefi—among our barbarous Teutonic an- 
cestors, for example. Then by his endowments of body and, 
mind, with his policy and his sword, in codperation with the 
people, he strengthened his position—made himself indeed a king. 
And then, long after the throne had been established, the reign- 
ing king, perhaps not a strong man at all—say, a James the 


1This was the primary significance of the episcopal successions, which 
were first valued as the guarantee of doctrinal truth.” (Dean Armitage Rob- 
inson, “The Vision of Unity,” p. 23.) 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 289 


First or some earlier English king—claimed a direct divine or- 
igin for the authority with which he found himself invested. He 
and his predecessors alike, so it was announced from the seat of 
power, were born to rule; and any resistance of their monarchical 
will, for any cause whatever, must be punished as a crime. 

What bishop, then, first made the claim of divine right for his 
office? Perhaps Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, as he is sup- 
posed to have been, a resident of Rome or its vicinity, in the 
early part of the third century. “But none,” says Hippolytus, 
“will refuse these [certain heathen errors] save the Holy Spirit 
bequeathed unto the Church, which the Apostles, having in the 
first instance received, have transmitted to those who have right- 
ly believed. But we as being their successors, and as participators 
in this grace, high-priesthood, and affice of teaching, as well as 
being reputed guardians of the Church, must not be found de- 
ficient in diligence, or disposed to suppress sound doctrine.’* 

Not a perfectly clear statement, this passage may nevertheless 
be taken as containing substantially the basal idea for which the 
modern High Churchman makes his plea. 

But the most prominent and influential ecclesiastic of the third 
century who stood for the successional sacerdotal idea was an- 
other bishop and martyr, whose acquaintance we have already 
made, Cyprian of Carthage.* 


4. How SHALL THE SILENCE OF History BE ACCOUNTED FOR? 


Here, then, is a question. If the single bishop is not heard of 
till the time of Ignatius, how will the High Churchman account 
for the existence of the sacerdotal line up to that time? He of- 
fers to account for it on any one of three suppositions. 

The first is that, during this early period every member of the 
board of presbyters, or bishops (presbyter-bishops), was in this 
sacerdotal episcopal succession—that is to say, was empowered, 
through his ordination, to ordain others. But when one of the 
number rose to supremacy over the rest, thus becoming the sole 


*Refutation of All Heresies,’ Proemium. *See pp. 345, 346. 
19 


—_— 


290 Christianity as Organized 


and single bishop of the congregation, he alone continued to 
exercise the ordaining function; and accordingly the line of epis- 
copal ordinations descended thenceforth from him. The func- 
tion of ordination at the beginning was, so to speak, “put in com- 
mission,” and there remained till the emergence of the single 
bishop.” 

The second supposition is that some one member of the board 
of presbyters had authority to ordain, and yet was called by 
the same name as his colleagues. It has been said of this ex- 
planation that it “cannot be disproved’’*—which is probably true. 

The third, and perhaps more generally preferred supposition, 
is that the bishops ordained by the Apostles were, like the Apos- 
tles themselves, itinerants, and that either they or their successors 
settled down, one after another, as single pastors, or bishops, and 
ordained their successors as such. Of these itinerant bishops, Tim- 
othy and Titus in the New Testament and a class of itinerant 
preachers called in the Didache “apostles” (in the wider sense of 
the title), “prophets,” “teachers,” are cited as examples.° 

Now there is none of these suppositions, of course, that claims 
the support of proof. In fact, none of them bears any mark of 
likelihood. They have simply been invented to show how a line 
of episcopal ordinations of which there is no contemporaneous 
evidence might conceivably have been started and kept up. 


*“But there are certain facts that have led some good authorities to sup- 
pose that, at one time, all the presbyters in some churches held together the 
chief authority in government and the power to ordain, the ‘episcopate’ be- 
ing, as it were, ‘in commission’ among them. . . . It [this theory] does 
not affect the principle of apostolic succession in the least. . . . It no 
more disturbs the principle of apostolic succession than if your lordship or- 
dained all the presbyters in this diocese to-day to episcopal functions.” 
(Gore, “The Mission of the Church,” pp. 22, 23.) 

“While, however, this view cannot be disproved, it must be admitted that 
it is unsupported by the evidence of the documents we have been consid- 
ering.” (Gore, “The Church and the Ministry,” p. 304.) 

®The Didache, xl. 3; xiii. 2. Gore, “The Church and the Ministry,” pp. 
304, 305. This author depreciates the testimony of the Didache, as a whole, 
but magnifies it here. It proves nothing, however, except that there were 
itinerant preachers in that day. 


Unity: Apostolic Succession 291 


5. THE SUCCESSIONAL SACERDOTAL EPISCOPATE A ROMAN IDEA. 


There is still another question of origins that here invites at- 
tention: Whence came the idea of the successional prelatic episco- 
pacy? We fail to find it arising out of historic facts; it shows 
no kinship to Greek ideals; it is foreign to Scripture teaching. 
But it does bear the water-marks of the governmental genius of 
Rome, with the Roman faculty of centralization and iron im- 
perialism. As the emperors laid hold upon and concentered in 
themselves the powers which under the Republic had been exer- 
cised by senate, consul, tribune, chief priest, every governmental 
officer, and asserted, “All these are rightly ours, for the unity 
and permanence of the empire, and have been ours, through in- 
heritance, from the beginning of the imperial line,” so the bishops 
laid hold upon the powers which had been formerly exercised by 
people and presbyters—the power to teach, to administer sacra- 
ments, to absolve, to rule—and declared, “All these are ours, 
for the unity and permanence of the Church, through the line of 
episcopal ordinations, even from the Divine Christ himself.” 

In neither case was truth conspicuous. In point of fact, Rome 
as military conqueror and civil ruler did not ask so much, What 
is true? as, What is effective? She enacted such laws, estab- 
lished such institutions, followed such methods, claimed such au- 
thority as seemed best suited to her stupendous purpose. To 
justify these actions at the bar of exact justice and truth, if seri- 
ously attempted at all, was an after-consideration. So likewise 
with the ecclesiasticism of the third and the following centuries, 
as affected by the Roman spirit. It instituted such ritual ob- 
servances, adopted such forms of government, put forth such 
claims as seemed well suited to strengthen its authority or ex- 
tend its influence, and sought justification for them in some word 
of Scripture. Power was held dearer than truth. Might was 
more faithfully practiced than right. 

But the Roman emperor was one, while the monarchical bish- 
ops were many. They were a widespread brotherhood of little 
monarchs, none superior to any other. This meant that the de- 
velopment was as yet incomplete. The logical outcome must be 


292 Christianity as Organized 


a single bishop, lord of all the others, ruling alone, if he can, 
over the whole ecclesiastic empire. Thus, accordingly, with 
steady and inevitable steps, it came to pass. And whom should 
all signs betoken as this one imperial and absolute ruler—whom 
but the bishop of the City of the Czesars? 


So the Church took on the Roman imperial character. Did 
it convert the Empire? It did so, but at the same time was itself, 
to a large extent, converted by the Empire. The Medieval 
Church, with its pope, its bishops under authority and having 
men under them, its army of priests and monks, and its policy of 
maintaining unity by unrelenting compulsion, was the new and 
ecclesiastic form of the Rome of the Emperors. “That which 
Marius and Czsar’”’—so the flatterers of Hildebrand are reported 
to have said to him—‘could not effect with torrents of blood you 
are effecting with a word.” 


XII. 


APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION: THE UNREAL ‘AND 
THE REAL. 


Tue sacerdotal theory of apostolic succession needs to be sup- 
ported by the most indubitable evidence. For its demands upon 
the reason and the spirit are indeed hard to bear. Those who 
hold it must believe that an absolutely unbroken physical channel 
of grace extends through all the intervening ages from the Apos- 
tles of our Lord to the bishops of to-day. A physical channel of 
grace—that is the doctrine. And if the stream be interrupted 
anywhere by the failure of the right person’s hands to rest upon 
the right person’s head, the Church in that line will cease to 
exist. 

Observe, then, that in order to perpetuate the Church with its 
channel of sacramental grace, in any particular line, the bishop 
who ordains another to the episcopate must himself have been 
ordained in due and proper form. But not only so; he must 
also have been baptized, either as an infant or as an adult, in 
due and proper form.” Because an unbaptized man’s imposition 
of hands in ordination would, according to the theory, be null 
and void. 

We must assume, therefore, that both these requirements, bap- 
tism and ordination, were complied with in the case of every 
bishop who stands anywhere in any line of episcopal ordinations 
that has reached unto our own day. Through all the genera- 
tions of nearly twenty centuries there has not occurred a single 


*Not that the bishop in question must needs have been baptized by a priest. 
Baptism by laymen is regarded as valid—a regenerative rite, just as if a 
priest had performed it—both by the Roman Catholic Church and the Rit- 
ualists. “They [the “sects”’],” says the Protestant Episcopal Bishop Grafton 
in a recent utterance, “have lost sacramental grace, save that of baptism.” 
But why not that also? 


(293) 


204. Christianity as Organized 


failure in either of the two. And such generations as many of 
them were! Among ignorant and barbarous populations, in 
semi-paganized Christianity, in times when the bishop’s office 
was shamelessly bought and sold like any article of merchandise 
in the market, during the Dark Ages, during the tenth century, 
during the century and a half when Rome was the veriest sink 
of corruption, it never came to pass that one of these unnum- 
bered bishops got into office who, through negligence, oversight, 
or other cause, had not been both regularly baptized and regu- 
larly ordained. All this must be believed. Otherwise it has to 
be admitted that the sacerdotal succession may have been bro- 
ken; and hence that no bishop on earth can tell whether he be 
a true bishop or a sacrilegious invader of the Lord’s house; no 
Christian minister, whether he be a true minister or an offerer 
of strange fire on God’s altar; no church, whether it be a true 
church or a mere religious organization without the covenanted 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But the case of such a succession calls in vain for evidence. 
The oft-quoted saying of Archbishop Whately, that “there is 
not a minister in all Christendom who is able to trace up, with 
any approach to certainty, his spiritual pedigree,’ is too obvious- 
ly true for discussion. Indeed, proof is here clearly out of the 
question. Ana priori assumption is made to take its place. Dog- 
ma must serve for history. 


1. TRANSMISSION THROUGH IMPURE HANDS. 


Even if a sacerdotal line of episcopal ordinations—to take up 
an impossible conception—were shown beyond all controversy, 
what can be known of the Christian spirit and character of the 


+With similar plainness of speech and no less correctness of inference, 
Whately goes on to say: “The ultimate consequence must be, that any one 
who sincerely believes that his claim to the blessings of the gospel covenant 
depends on his own minister’s claim to the supposed sacramental virtue of 
true ordination, and this again, on perfect apostolic succession as above 
described, must be involved, in proportion as he reads and inquires and re- 
flects and reasons on the subject, in the most distressing doubt and per- 
plexity.” (“The Kingdom of Christ,” Essay II., sec. 30.) 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 295 


vast majority of the bishops through whose action the sacra- 
mental grace is supposed to be passed down from soul to soul? 
Were they in communion with the mind of Christ? As a matter 
of fact, it is known that many of these ordaining hands were 
idle, proud, and worldly hands.” It was not a Protestant con- 
trovertist but the pope Hildebrand who declared, two years after 
his elevation to the papal throne: “If I look with the glance of 
the mind toward the parts of the West, or of the South, or of the 
North, I find scarcely anywhere bishops who are such by lawful 
election and mode of life, who rule the Christian people through 
the love of Christ and not through worldly ambition.” Un- 
doubtedly in certain ages of the Church many of them were deep- 
dyed in villainy and uncleanness. 

In many cases the succession of Simon the Sorcerer was dis- 
tinctly recognizable. Money was offered to buy the office through 
which the grace of the Divine Spirit was supposed to be con- 
veyed: “Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay my 
hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit.”* And the answer was 
not that of Simon Peter to Simon Magus. It was not, “Thy 
silver perish with thee, because thou hast thought to obtain the 
gift of God with money.”* On the contrary, the silver and gold 
were eagerly accepted, the office conferred, and the applicant 
empowered, according to sacramentarian teaching, to bestow 
upon whomsoever he chose the Holy Spirit of God. 

Through the hands, then, of such men, sitting high in the 
synagogue of Satan, has the grace of the Holy Spirit which 
alone can make a man a true minister of Jesus Christ, and per- 
petuate Christ’s Church on earth, been communicated. And this 
is the way of truth, this the gospel. Such a proposition, by 
whatever calm and beautiful words commended, suggests a 


*“A bishop was a dignitary, a peer, a being of exalted state, as much for 
show as for use, but indispensable to the right constitution of things—in 
England. The modern idea of the Apostolic Bishop was not thinkable. 
Such a creature had not been seen for so many centuries that his memory 
had faded out.” (McConnell, “Hist. of American Episcopal Church,” pp. 
181, 182.) 

*Acts viii. 19. SActs viii. 20, 


296 Christianity as Organized 


nearer kinship to magic and profanity than to the religion of 
Jesus.* 

It may be said in reply that, as everybody knows, there have 
been corrupt and wicked chief officers in the Church in all ages, 
and yet no one will assert that their depravity has broken up the 
Church itself. But there is an essential difference between the 
two cases. In the one case, these wicked and corrupt chief offi- 
cers are believed to be, just like the good and true, channels of 
grace, absolutely necessary to the perpetuation of the Church: 
in the other case, they are believed to be not only unnecessary but 
—save as Providence may make their “wrath to praise him’”— 
obstructive and injurious. 

True it is that God’s workers in the world are all imperfect 
characters. Who else are anywhere to be found? There are no 
perfect sons of God, faultless builders of the holy city that is 
to be—there are none now beneath the skies. Yet, in this age- 
long spiritual upbuilding, God is making use of the Jacobs and 
Davids and Simon Peters and the men and women of to-day who 
love his cause. But as personalities, not as automata; for the 
human power that is in them, not as moving hands and lips which 
in and of themselves are necessary to perpetuate his Church and 
kingdom. 

Supposing, however, that an unbroken succession of enlight- 
ened and holy men should have occupied the bishop’s chair 
through all these ages, the assertion that these men have actually 
imparted the gift of the Holy Spirit to men kneeling before 
them for ordination to the ministry, and have thus empowered 


1“Tf the grace of God comes this way, and is therefore itself much more 
materialistic than the best influences of human life, the Bible must be read 
backwards, and the most familiar and fundamental principles of Christianity 
will be turned upside down. Moreover, to suppose that God’s grace—so 
spiritually pure—not only chooses for its channel a crassly material passage 
along the course of the ages, but has often had to filter its way through the 
very sinks of uttermost depravity, according to the indisputably attested 
villainies of priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes, in the dark ages and the 
dark places of the Church’s history: is not this more than an impossibility, 
and worse than an absurdity? For does it not come very near to blasphemy 
against the Holy One?” (Lockyer, “Evangelical Succession,” pp. 127, 128). 


ee eee ee 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 207 


these men in their turn to impart, through religious rites, to other 
souls, “the gift of the Holy Ghost which is the essence of the 
Christian life,’ would be extremely difficult of belief. 


2. A VIOLATION oF ALL ANALOGIES. 


For one thing this theory violates the analogy of all God’s 
other ways of helping and saving men through their fellow-men. 
For how is it in all other instances that men help or save one 
another? It is by means of the contact of soul with soul in ac- 
cordance with spiritual laws. We submit to the authority of su- 
periors, receive knowledge from teachers, respond to the love of 
friends, feel and follow the example of fellow-men. The eye 
falls upon a printed page, and some mind of a far-off time touch- 
es our mind as really as does the friend at our side. Standing 
together in the congregation, Christian worshipers sing unto 
God and unto one another in hymns and spiritual songs; but just 
as truly a Bernard of Clairvaux, a Charles Wesley, a Ray Palmer 
is singing God’s praise through them, and they through him. 
Out of the past, that “dying Past which never dies,” but is al- 
ways pulsating through the present, voices call and the touch of 
hands that have melted into dust is upon us. 

One of the customs of the unenlightened Abyssinian Church, 
in ordination to the episcopal office, is to touch the head of the 
ordinand with the dead hand of one of his predecessors. Stripped 
of the superstitions that seem to be its real motive, this rite re- 
mains a symbol, however crass and repulsive, of the vital con- 
nection between the former chiefs of the Church and its present 
ministry. 

‘ Nor can human influence dispense with physical means and in- 
struments. For we are still in the flesh. There is the possibility 
of power in a touch, in a hand-grasp, in a laying on of hands. 
“With the dropping of a little word,” says Helen Keller, “from 
another’s hand into mine, a slight flutter of the fingers, began 
the intelligence, the joy, the fullness of life.’”* When the Apos- 
tles laid hands upon the Seven, or the presbytery laid hands upon 


*“The World I Live In,” pp. 5, 6. 


298 Christianity as Organized 


sincere but self-distrustful young Timothy, it may be believed 
that the physical contact itself meant something. It was a tactual 
sign of authorization, of Christian confidence, of love and prayer. 
Such symbolic acts are not irrational or unspiritual: they make 
appeal to the soul by way of the senses. But to affirm that, 
through mere mechanical action, they communicate the presence 
and abiding power of the Holy Spirit, is to put them out of 
harmony with all other intercommunion of soul with soul. And 
not as elevating them above it into some sublimer sphere of 
their own, but as thrusting them down upon the bare physical 
plane. 

High Anglicanism is even more materialistic at this point than 
Romanism. For it regards the act of the priest in baptism, in 
the Lord’s Supper, in ordination, and in confirmation, as suff- 
cient to impart grace, whether he intend to impart it or not, while 
Romanism demands the sacerdotal “intention.” “If any one,” 
declares the Council of Trent, “shall say that in ministers, while 
they effect and confer the sacraments, there is not required the 
intention at least of doing what the Church does, let him be 
anathema.’”” It is true that the Romanist here passes into a “‘very 
dungeon of uncertainties.””. For who can tell in any case whether 
the officiating priest has the proper intention or not? and accord- 
ingly who can tell whether any particular bishop, much less each 
and every whole line of bishops from the days of the Apostles 
onward, has received, through the hands of episcopal ordainers, 
the grace absolutely necessary to qualify him to ordain others 
and so to perpetuate the sacerdotal line?” These special uncer- 
tainties the High Anglican ayoids, but only by making the 
priestly act still more mechanical than that of the Roman 


*Sess. VII., can. xi. 

2“Again the Bishop [of Minorca] supposed another case. Suppose a bad 
priest without right intention baptizes a child, and the child becomes a 
bishop, and ordains other bishops. The consequences would be too frightful 
to think of. There could be no Church without a bishop, and no true bishop 
who was not baptized. The speaker urged the Council to declare that if the 
form was rightly observed, intention made no difference.” (Froude, “The 
Council of Trent,” p. 222.) 


ee 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 299 


priest." The Anglican officiating minister’s hands and tongue, 
without will, suffice. Automatic action, destitute of all intelli- 
gence, desire, or purpose, may serve as the means, Divinely ap- 
pointed, of conveying grace to a believing soul.” 

In fact, the officiating minister may have an “evil intention,” 
and yet, against his will, through the mere outward act per- 
formed, the grace of the Holy Spirit will be conveyed, provided 
always that there is a laying on of hands and the utterance of 
the prescribed formula. But never otherwise.” It is a purely 
mechanical transmission of the grace of God to a properly re- 
cipient soul. As in the case of friend speaking to friend through 
the telephone, there must be a particular and fixed physical me- 
dium as well as an attentive mind to receive the message; else 
no communication is established. One might be excused for ask- 


*“The essential matter of ordination to the episcopate is the imposition 
of the bishop’s hands and the Form prayer.” (Blunt, Dictionary of His- 
torical and Doctrinal Theology, Art. “Bishops.”) To prove these essential 
requirements to have been met in every case is a sheer impossibility. Yet 
the Romanist must prove, in addition, that they have been met with a good 
intention on the part of the officiating bishop—a double impossibility. As to 
mechanicalness, however, the Roman is distinctly preferable to the Anglican 
conception. 

*Observe, faith on the part of the recipient is an indispensable condition. 
“The sacramental gifts are valid through the action of the Spirit without any 
action on our part. They are God's gifts simply. But their whole effect on 
us depends on the degree of assimilative effort—the degree of faith—which 
we exercise.” (Gore, “The Mission of the Church,” 53.) But the same 
“assimilative effort,” the same faith, if exercised in any other circumstances 
—for example, on one’s knees at home, or at a table of the Lord where the 
bread and wine had not been consecrated by an episcopally ordained min- 
ister—would be followed by no such effect. Without the interposition of a 
bishop tactually descended from one of the Twelve Apostles, the Holy Spirit 
will not convey the “sacramental gifts.” 

*“Tf the minister of any sacrament were to perform it with the profane 
and perverse intention of openly ridiculing it, or making it invalid, then 
indeed there might be reasonable doubt whether his ministration would be 
effective. But if he uses the prescribed rites and words, he acts as the 
deputy of the Church, and no deficient or evil intention can affect the validity 
of what depends on his ministerial acts, and not on his private and personal 
will.” (Blunt, “Dictionary of Historical and Doctrinal Theology,” Art. “In- 
tention.”) ° 


3200 Christianity as Organized 


ing whether this is really believed or merely “accepted” or be- 
lieved to be believed. 

We are reminded by the Ritualist that Christianity is the re- 
ligion of the Incarnation, and are told that therefore it is rea- 
sonable to expect that the grace of Christ which makes a man a 
genuine minister of the gospel shall flow into his soul through 
a material channel. But such a conclusion goes hopelessly astray 
from its premises. Let us listen, however, to the argument: 
“*Tactual succession, can that convey grace?’ I answer yes, 
if God so wills; and I am convinced that he does so will, be- 
cause he rules the New Dispensation, our Christian system, by 
the law of the Incarnation—the law, namely, that God through 
the person of his Eternal Son comes to us through the agency of 
matter—and hence I would anticipate, as I find verified in the 
event, that all subordinate blessings, so far as I know, in his 
kingdom, and all other blessings are subordinate to Jesus Christ, 
are conveyed to me through the instrumentality of matter” Un- 
doubtedly so, since in this world it is impossible to live at all ex- 
cept “through the instrumentality of matter.’ But does it follow 
from this truth that grace is made to flow through flesh? Phys- 
ical processes coOperate with spiritual processes, but do not sub- 
stitute them. ‘Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” the Word 
was made flesh; but there is no more reason to believe that the 
“grace” can be imparted tactually than the “truth.” It was the 
incarnate Saviour who said: ‘The flesh profiteth nothing; the 
words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit and are life.” 


3. TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIAN AND MINISTERIAL EXPERIENCE. 

Nor is the case anywise different when the testimony of Chris- 
tian and ministerial experience is called for. Those who would 
receive the Holy Spirit must await the realization of his pres- 
ence in prayer, with an open and believing heart. Those who 
will to do God’s will are taught of him and made strong in his 
service. Meeting together in worship, they are helpful to one 
another and prepared to receive a greater spiritual gift. If at 


1The Rt. Rev. G. F. Seymour, in “Church Reunion,” p. 185. 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 301 


the table of the Lord they are drawn consciously nearer to him 
who, not having been seen, is nevertheless loved, it is through 
faith and trust and self-consecration no less truly than if they 
were kneeling in the place of secret devotion. This is surely the 
witness of the Christian consciousness. As to a peculiar “sac- 
ramental”’ grace, it is not a matter of experience but of hearsay. 

And is it otherwise on the occasion of one’s ordination to the 
ministry of the gospel, or to the office of a bishop in the Church 
of God? Is there in this case any such realization of divine pow- 
er as one must interpret as a sign of grace given by the act of 
ordination itself? If the man rise up and leave the house of 
prayer renewed in the spirit of his vocation, is it not an ex- 
perience of the same kind, however different possibly in degree, 
as more than once before has glorified his daily life? 


4. THE PRACTICAL TEST. 


But there is a practical test of religious systems; and it also is 
divine. Jesus has said concerning false prophets: “By their fruits 
ye shall know them.”* Does he announce in this word a prin- 
ciple that may be applied in the present case? It would seem so. 
For we are not here dealing with a doctrine or a form of polity 
that is only one among others of perhaps equal value, and in it- 
self indecisive as to whether the religious body representing it 
be really a church of Jesus Christ.* It is a question as to whether 
a body of religious people possess a certain “‘permanent and es- 
sential element of Christianity ;’ whether they have a valid min- 
istry and valid Christian ordinances; in brief, whether they be a 
church of Christ or not. It is no surface question. It goes, with 


Matt. vii. 15-18. 

2“The fundamental difference, then, which divides the evangelical from 
the sacerdotal idea is theological; the Gospel reposes on the sovereign pa- 
ternity of God, and his immediate relation through Jesus Christ with all 
men. But in this is contained a second difference which is as decisive and 
determinate—the conditions of acceptance with him are all spiritual and 
ethical. They are in no respect sensuous and formal, depending on rites 
observed or external relations established.” (Fairbairn, “Studies in Reli- 
gion and Theology,” p. 131.) 


302 Christianity as Organized 


the question of true prophet or false, fig tree or thistle, shepherd 
or robber, to the heart of the matter. 

If certain congregated Christians alone possess and use the ~ 
“social sacraments” by dependence on which is given that “fel- 
lowship with God” which every Christian receives “as an endow- 
ment of his personal life,” so that they do constitute a real church — 
of Jesus Christ, while the religious communions existing side 
by side with them are only schismatics and pretenders, then they 
will be holier men than these others. Where is the benefit of a 
depositary and channel of grace, if those who have the exclusive 
enjoyment of it are no better morally and spiritually than the 
members of other religious bodies? They will be better. They 
will be less worldly, less arrogant and contemptuous, purer in 
heart and life, with a heightened power of conscience, with a 
deeper peace and a larger joy, more self-sacrificing, more useful, 
with greater power in prayer and in persuasive speech with their 
fellows, humbler, more zealous; in a word, more Christlike. As 
a matter of fact, do they prove themselves to be so? 

Collectively they will be clothed with a spiritual power that no 
organized company of schismatics can ever hope to know. Given 
an equal opportunity with those who have cut themselves off, 
through either willfulness or ignorance, from the divinely ap- 
pointed ministry of grace, they will lead greater multitudes of 
men to the Saviour, both at home and in foreign lands. Not only 
so; but they will develop in their communicants, day by day, 
through that gift of the Holy Spirit which they alone can dis- 
pense, a higher type of Christian experience and character than 
is possible under a mere so-called ministry of the gospel. Have 
they done so? 

“Thank God for the Historic Episcopate, the spinal cord of 
the Catholic Church’’—such is the fervent doxology of the bishop 
whose words were quoted a moment ago—‘which carries down 
from the Divine Head—Christ our Lord, God over all in heaven 
—the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and diffuses them through orders 
and sacraments and services, as nervous vitality permeates the 
body and fills it with life from the crown of the head to the 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 303 


got 


sole of the foot.’ It is the members of such communions as the 
Church of Rome, the Orthodox Eastern Church, the Church of 
England, and the Protestant Episcopal Church that are here 
spoken of as sole recipients of these unceasing great gifts of the 
Spirit of God, which flow into the soul from Christ through the 
historic succession of bishops. No one save the members of 
these particular communions is a member of the Church, which 
is the body of Christ; no one but they can receive any of these 
“gifts of the Holy Ghost.” Other Christian communions are 
like a human body destitute of the spinal cord. May we not be 
permitted, then, to ask for the evidence that the spiritual life of 
all other Christians is low and poor indeed, a mere flabby in- 
vertebrate life, as, according to the argument, it must be, rela- 
tively to that of Roman Catholic or Orthodox Eastern or Angli- 
can or Protestant Episcopal Christians ?° 

Nor will it avail to say that the gift of covenanted grace may 
lie unused in the soul, like a talent buried in the earth. This 
negative result can hardly be conceived as possible. May un- 


*The Rt. Rev. G. F. Seymour, in “Church Reunion,” p. 189. 

“Dr. William Jones Seabury, in his “Introduction to the Study of Eccle- 
siastical Polity,’ would seem to think that the nonsuccessional churches, or 
“schismatical societies,’ as he calls them, are but poorly able to stand such 
a test. “And it may be assumed that such evidences as they give of the 
possession of the grace of God are due to the mercy of God, who does not 
hold them responsible for a position which is attributable to the fault of 
others rather than of themselves” (p. 50). “Such evidences as they give:” 
is that a word of truth? 

Bishop Gore is less depreciatory (though he fails to touch the real point 
in question): “It follows then—not that God’s grace has not worked, and 
worked largely through many an irregular ministry where it was exercised in 
good faith—but that a ministry not episcopally received is invalid—that is to 
say, falls outside the conditions of covenanted security and cannot justify it- 
self in terms of the covenant.” (“The Church and the Ministry,” p. 313.) 

But Dean Lefroy, not a sacerdotalist, represents the judgment in which 
most unbiased minds would probably feel constrained to unite: “Does the 
apostolic succession render its believers, or even its representatives, types of 
a superior ethical order? Are they illustrations of peculiar grace? Are men 
rendered especially holy, or conspicuously active, or self-denying, or diligent, 
by apostolic succession? . . . In real sadness it may be asserted that few 
hypotheses are more at variance with individual experience, not to refer to 
observation and to history.” (“The Christian Ministry,” p. 350.) 


304. Christianity as Organized 


used grace be kept? But supposing that it be possible, and that 
any ten thousand Christians, let us say, who are taught that they 
have received this grace, fail to show the least moral and spir- 
itual superiority over any ten thousand Christians who of a cer- 
tainty have not received it, living side by side with them, one 
cannot help doubting the utility and by consequence the reality 
of the bestowment. 

Take, for illustration, the somewhat analogous case of nat- 
ural talent. A man may have from the hand of God a gift of 
reasoning, of imagination, of music, of eloquence, and through 
unfaithfulness in the use of it become no better reasoner, poet, 
musician, speaker, than his neighbor who is destitute of this 
special endowment. But if the men for whom such gifts are 
claimed fail as a class, through the ages, to show any superiority 
to the ungifted in the same calling, who would wish to share the 
responsibility of their lot? Or suppose that they should show 
inferiority. 


It is a topic on which one has no heart to linger. Let us con- 
clude with a brief recall of the main points in the discussion: 
(1) Nothing short of the plain teaching of the New Testament 
is sufficient proof of a priestly tactual succession of bishops 
through whom alone the Church of Christ can be perpetuated 
on earth; but when this proof is asked for, the answer is no bet- 
ter than a stone for bread. (2) Even if a line of episcopal or- 
dinations were proved, as a historic fact, this would by no means 
show it to be a channel of mechanically imparted grace; but such 
a line has never been proved, and is confessedly incapable of » 
proof. (3) The idea of this tactual impartation of grace is con- 
trary to all that we know through reason, experience, and the 
Scriptures of the ways of God with men as living and rational 
souls. (4) The fruits of the supposed episcopal succession, in 
the lives of private church-members as well as of “bishops and 
other clergy,” when compared with the lives of Christians and 
ministers of Christ generally, are unfavorable to belief in its 
reality. 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 305 
5. CLAIM OF APOSTOLICITY FOR THE Two LOWER ORDERS. 


Not only in its main contention—the tactual line of apostolic 
bishops—but also in its claim of apostolicity for the two lower 
orders of the ministry,” the successional theory must forego 
Scripture proof. 

(1) “Their [the New Testament churches’] deacons,” says 
Archbishop Whately, “appear to have had an office considerably 
different from those of our Church.’” But the word “consider- 
ably” is here inadequate. The diaconate of the Church of En- 
gland retains hardly a vestige of resemblance to anything that 
is known as the diaconate in the New Testament. To say that 
the two are essentially, or in principle, the same, would be to 
say that financial ministration to the poor is essentially the same 
function as preaching, baptizing, and assisting in the adminis- 
tration of the Lord’s Supper. The name only has been re- 
tained.” 

(2) And in the case of the presbyterate, even the name has 
been cast aside, and a totally different designation adopted. A 
name that the New Testament never gives to any office in the 
Church of Jesus, the name priesthood, is used for the office to 
which the deacon is promoted. He becomes a priest. Com- 
paring, then, the parish priest of to-day with any member of the 
council of presbyters in an apostolic church, must the candid 
student say that the two offices are essentially the same, or that 
they are essentially and almost wholly different? 


“Tt [the threefold apostolic ministry] has been called the historic back- 
bone of the Church. It is more than this. It is the divinely appointed chan- 
nel of life and grace. . . . The apostolic ministry in its threefold order 
pertains to the esse and not merely to the bene esse of the Church.” (Wirg- 
man, “The Constitutional Authority of Bishops,” pp. 5, 6.) 

2“The Kingdom of Christ,’ Essay II., Sec. 20. 

Canon Liddon, it is true, has said that, according to the teaching of the 
New Testament, deacons, by a detachment of the plenitude of ministerial 
power from the Apostles, were “specially empowered to preach and to ad- 
minister the sacrament of baptism.” (“Clerical Life and Work,” p. 293.) 
But how the great and courageous High-Church preacher could get the con- 
sent of his mind to make such an assertion, it is not very easy to understand, 


20 


306 Christianity as Organized 


If, therefore, it be held that the threefold ministry is a neces- 
sary part of the divine constitution of the Church, one of these 
two things must also be taken as true: either the requirement of 
this divine law is satisfied in the mere existence of three minis- 
terial orders, without reference to their functions, the triple num- 
ber alone being essential, or this requirement has been violated 
outright in the Anglican, as indeed in every other, Church. 


6. THE EpIscoPpATE AS A CENTER OF UNITY. 


Let us now recall the fact that Cyprian put forth his doctrine 
of the episcopate, as Irenzeus had put forth his, and Ignatius his, 
in the interest of ecclesiastical unity. It is a cause inexpressibly 
dear to the Christian heart. It was dear to the heart of the 
newly converted but strong and self-denying martyr-bishop of 
Carthage. The treatise which may be taken as in some sort the 
key of interpretation to all his writings is “On the Unity of the 
Church.” ‘The episcopate,”’ so he insists in this little book, “‘is 
one, each part of which is held by each for the whole. The 
Church also is one, which is spread abroad far and wide into a 
multitude by the increase of fruitfulness” (c. 5). Nor is it any 
wonder that a man of Cyprian’s creed should be an apologist of 
unity. For he cannot even think of the salvation of a soul outside 
the Catholic Church: schism as well as heresy is fatal. Believing 
thus, how could he do less than his best to maintain the undi- 
vided Church? It was to him the one refuge of imperiled souls? 

But the conception of the episcopate as a center of unity is not 
peculiar to those first centuries. It has persisted as a formative 
ecclesiastic idea. In the newer as in the older episcopal com- 
munions, in the evangelical as in the sacerdotal, it is operative 
to-day.” 

Is the bishop, then, in point of fact, an appreciable center of 
unity? As truly as the governor of a state, or the president of 


*“Fence the episcopate, which is the continuation of the Apostolic min- 
istry, appears as the divinely appointed center of the unity of the visible 
Church.” (Seabury, “Introduction to the Study of Ecclesiastical Polity,” p. 49.) 

“We do hereby affirm that the Christian unity, now so earnestly desired 
by the memorialists, can be restored only by the return of all Christian 


EE 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 307 


any voluntary society, or the Christian pastor of a local congre- 
gation. The experience of the centuries, as well as the nature of 
the case, may certainly put this question outside the range of 
reasonable doubt. 

Nevertheless, it may still be asked, Might not some other meth- 
od have been better? Congregationalism finds a bond of union 
in its National Council of ministers and lay delegates, and Pres- 
byterianism in its General Assembly of teaching and of ruling 
elders. If either of these methods had been followed in Chris- 
tianity from the beginning, the evils peculiarly incident to the 
bishop’s office would have been avoided. And might not one or 
the other of them have been sufficient? Would it not have been 
sufficient in the Church’s formative period—in the time of Ig- 
natius, of Irenzeus, of Cyprian—when, by reason of repeated per- 
secutions from without and powerful heresies within, threaten- 
ing to scatter and devour, the demand for Christian unity was in 
the highest degree imperative? Would it not have been suffi- 
cient even in the heterogeneous populations and amid the igno- 
rance and turbulence of the Dark Ages—and have made them 
somewhat less dark? It may be so. One might reconstruct the 
history of the Church from the standpoint of such a hypothesis, 
so as to show through the power of imagination a much fairer 


communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic 
Church during the first ages of its existence, which principles we believe to 
be the substantial Deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ 
and his Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world. 

“As inherent parts of this sacred Deposit, and therefore as essential to the 
restoration of unity among the divided branches of Christendom, we account 
the following, to wit, 

“tv. The Historic Episcopate.’ Declaration of the House of Bishops 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, October 20, 1886. 

“Q. What is another connectional bond? 

“A. The Joint Itinerant Superintendency—equally related to the whole 
Church and supported by the whole Church.” (McTyeire, “A Catechism of 
Church Government,” pp. 123, 124.) 

“Q. Which, then, is the better form of Episcopacy? 

“A. If to promote unity and repress schism be the main end and purpose 
of this form of ecclesiastical polity, the better form is that which is general, 
not that which is diocesan.” (Jbid., p. 85.) 


308 Christianity as Organized 


picture than has in fact appeared. But probably few historians 
would be willing to do it. The need of some sort of personal 
leadership and superintendence would be seriously felt. And at 
best the “ifs’’ of historic study are illusory guides. 

But while the episcopate may well be recognized as an effective 
unifier of Christian congregations, it cannot be forgotten that 
false or exorbitant claims, on the part of bishop or any other 
ruler, do not make for real unity. These are divisive forces.* 
For a time, or even, as men count the years, for a very long 
time, they do in some instances achieve their purpose. They 
have achieved it with large success, though with equally large 
failure, in the Church of Rome. But the purpose itself is false. 
The ideal is unchristian. It is not organism but aggregation, the 
forcing of men together by external pressure—as if they were 
so many blocks of concrete to be shaped and placed, instead of 
living persons to be guided and governed into unity. Will it 
ultimately succeed? It cannot, unless the moral progress of the 
world is to be inhibited. Men will discover and reject the false 
or irrational rule. 

Dean E. M. Goulbourn, a most earnest and devout High 
Churchman, describes the English Establishment as in danger 
of disastrous schism. The persistent contending of the High- 
Church and the Low-Church party has of late “imperilled the 
existence of their common mother.” “Then,” he continues, “just 
as this struggle is growing desperate, a cry is raised, by those 
who are jealous of the Church’s position, for her disestablish- 
ment and disendowment—steps which, if carried into effect, 
would certainly weaken her already feeble powers of coherence, 
and split her into two or three narrow factions.”* Let us earnest- 


1“Then as to the danger of schism, nothing can be more calculated to cre- 
ate or increase it than to add to all the other sources of difference among 
Christians these additional ones resulting from the theory we are considering 
[that of a personal apostolic succession]. . . . In short, there is no imagi- 
nable limit to the schisms that may be introduced and kept up through the 
operation of these principles, advocated especially with a view to the repres- 
sion of schism.” (Whately, “The Kingdom of Christ,” Essay ii., sec. 31.) 

“The Holy Catholic Church,” p. 118, 


: 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 309 


ly hope that it is not true—believing, as we may, that disestab- 
lishment, by giving relief from disabling embarrassments and 
burdens, would prove a signal blessing. But if it be true, then 
the Church of England herself is held together not by the Epis- 
copal Succession which she so strongly commends as an indis- 
pensable principle of the Church’s unity, but by the endowments 
and control of the state. 


7. THE REAL AposTOLic SUCCESSION. 


The fable has its moral. The myth is an embodiment of cer- 
tain visionary ideas about earth or sky. Similarly the ecclesi- 
astic priesthood represents, in distorted form, a truth of life and 
religion. It represents the universal need of some purely human 
mediation between God and the soul. And undoubtedly this is 
a truth; for how many of us would ever find our way to the 
Father of spirits, “though he is not far from each one of us,” 
were it not for the friends who come with knowledge, sympathy, 
persuasion, personal example, to lead their fellows to him? The 
salvation of men is verily by God drawing near to them through 
their fellow-men. 

Now of this great spiritual reality, the ecclesiastic priesthood 
presents a superstitious perversion. And similar to the priestly 
office is the tactual succession upon which it is wont to rest its 
claim. As the former differs from the Christian priesthood, so 
the latter differs from the ministerial succession in the gospel of 
Christ. It is the difference between the unreal and the real. 
For as there is a true priesthood, so there is a true ministerial 
succession. Its origin is unmistakably shown in the Scriptures; 
its spiritual fruits are manifest far and wide inthe world of to-day. 

(1) It is a divine succession. It comes from above, and 
through no human intermediaries." Out of what personal ex- 


*“There are in the last analysis two, and only two, coherent theories of 
the origin and character of the Christian ministry. Of these one makes the 
minister the elected delegate of the congregation; in teaching and minister- 
ing he exerts an authority which he derives from his flock. The other traces 
ministerial authority to the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, who deposited 
it in its fullness in the College of Apostles.” (Liddon, sermon on “A Father 


310 Christianity as Organized 


perience does it arise? Out of the call of God in the soul and 
the power of the Spirit which follows upon the whole-hearted 
response to that call. It is the succession which began with the 
prophets of Jehovah, proclaiming his will and foretelling, ac- 
cording to the knowledge given them, the Christ who was to 
come. It was exemplified in Elijah the prophet and John the 
prophet “and more than a prophet.” Here were two men in two 
far-separated ages of the Church’s history; two men but one 
calling, one spirit, one power of word and deed, so that the very 
name of the earlier preacher was given by the Lord of them 
both, and of us all, to the later. It is the succession in which 
the Apostles lived and wrought. Therefore it is those who are 
called with the same essential calling and are quickened by the 
same Spirit of power that follow in the way of prophet and 
Apostle, now and ever. 

With obedience to such a vocation, a man must be a true min- 
ister of Jesus Christ. Without it he cannot be. The vocation 
itself speaks with the voice of authority and is imperative. 

(2) It is ecclesiastical. Not indeed necessarily so. Even if 
the church with which he is connected should refuse its indorse- 
ment, the man sent of God must, as opportunity offers, teach and 
preach Jesus Christ. But sucha case would be exceptional and rare. 
Ordinarily the Christian preacher will go forth under the authori- 
ty and approval of the Christian congregation. The call of God 
in the soul will take outward form in the call of the Church. 

Was it not so in the apostolic churches? The people were to 
accept or reject him who came to them, or rose up among them, 
professing to be a prophet of God. For though they might them- 
selves be unable to interpret the will of God in thrilling and con- 
vincing speech, yet it was within their province to judge the pro- 
phetic word of others—as one need not be himself a creative 


in Christ,” in “Clerical Life and Work.”) There is certainly a third coherent 
theory that remains undissolved by “the last analysis’—namely, that the voca- 
tion to the Christian ministry is directly from the Spirit of God, attested by 
Scripture signs, and officially recognized by the constituted authorities of 
some Christian communion. 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 311 


poet or musician in order to perceive what true poetry or music 

is. Though unable to do the work of a prophet, all who were 

of the truth were qualified to “receive a prophet in the name of 

a prophet”—and share in his reward. 

“All who were of the truth’’—for did not the Master himself 
say that these, and not only official teachers or preachers, are 
they who hear his voice? No matter how unschooled or down- 
trodden, they may know him and walk in the very light of God. 

_ It was of such as these, indeed, that the first Christian congre- 
gations were, to a large extent, composed. “Not many wise after 
the flesh, . . . not many noble.” Slaves, children of bar- 
barians, common people, these, converted to Christ, seem for the 
most part to have made up the churches to which the chief of 
the Apostles ministered. And yet what potentiality of spiritual 
knowledge he was able to see in them all! So he prays for them: 

“That your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge 

and all discernment ;’”* “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and 
revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your 
heart enlightened ;”* “That ye may be filled with the knowledge 
of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.’* What 

: more could he have desired for the teachers themselves than he 

: did repeatedly ask of God for their congregations of Christian 

_ believers, worshipers, hearers? 

Ass a matter of fact, the gift of speaking God’s word would 

_ be fruitless and vain without its complement, the hearer’s gift 

| of recognizing that spoken word. It would fall dead upon his 
ears. Only he that has ears can hear: only he that is “spiritual” 
| can “judge.” 

But did not our Lord bid his disciples “judge not?” Truly 
so; and at the same time to “beware of false prophets,’ who 
should be known by “their fruits.” Accordingly the Christian 
people, while admonished by their apostolic teachers to “despise 
not prophesyings,”’ were at the same time bidden to “prove all 


Beit, “Eph. i. 17. "Col. a 19, “1 Cor ii 15. *Matt. vit. 2) 15, 16, 


213 Christianity as Organized 


b 


things” and “hold fast that which is good.’”” They must “prove 
the spirits, whether they are of God,’ and were commended for 
trying “them who call themselves apostles and they are not,” and 
finding them false.” To some of them had been given a special 
gift of the “discerning of spirits.”* To them all had been given 
somewhat of this spiritual discernment: “Let the prophets speak 
by two or three, and let the others discern (Saxpivw, discrim- 
inate, judge).’”” The Apostle Paul specifically commends the 
exercise of their personal judgment with reference to certain of 
his own teachings and counsels.” It was their responsibility, 
which they could not blamelessly lay aside. It was their right, 
which could not righteously be wrested from them. 

Thus, then, has it been with those whom God has sent forth 
to tell in living speech his word of life, in the successive genera- 
tions of the Church. They are also the sent ones of Christ’s 
people. This is their truest ordination. They are “tried, ex- 
amined, and admitted” into their ministry, either directly or 
through representatives, by the Christian congregation. 

Their official ministrations, let it ever be remembered, are not 
necessary to originate a church. Only the presence of “the Apos-: 
tle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus,” is required 
or sufficient for that. Such, indeed, is the declared condition 
where the words “catholic church” appear for the first time in 
Christian literature: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the cath- 
olic church (} KafodtKi) éxxAyoia),”" Tt is true now, even as in the 
beginning. And just as such a church, true and therefore cath- 
olic, is authorized, so far as it shares in the mind of Christ, to 
hold the power of the “keys,” so likewise is it authorized to ap- 
prove or refuse those who would be received by it as witness- 
bearers and ministers of the gospel. 


(3) It is evangelical. The all-inclusive truth with which it — 
has been intrusted is the good news of Divine redeeming grace. — 


Knowledge, through Him who could say, “He that hath seen me 


11 Thess. v. 21. ®Rev. ii. 2. ®t Cor. xiv. 20. 
?t John iv. I. “t Cor. xii. IO. *t Cor. xX. D5 xis 
"Ignatius, “To the Smyrnzans,” 8. 


Mi taal Ri i ~ 


Apostolic Succession: Unreal, Real 313 


hath seen the Father;”’ peace, through the blood of his cross; 
love, from its fountain in the seli-giving of God since the foun- 
dation of the world; life, in Him who died for us and rose 
again, himself the Resurrection and the Life: these, even from 
apostolic days, have been its distinct and distinctive messages. 
In the twentieth century, as in the first, the Christ of the Cross 
—reconciliation and communion with God in him—is its theme. 


This is the message that I bring, 

A message angels fain would sing: 

“Oh, be ye reconciled,” thus saith your Lord and King, 
“Oh, be ye reconciled to God.” 


(4) It is a succession im spiritual gifts. Because to com- 
municate through speech to the assembled congregation this liv- 
ing word of God, calls for the gift of preaching. “And having 
gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, 
whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of 
our faith.”” Not for the administration of the sacraments, di- 
vinely ordained though they are, were men called with a special 
calling and dowered with a special gift in the apostolic churches. 
But there has been such a gift of preaching, from the days of 
the Apostles and their fellow-ministers until now. Therefore it 
is the office of a preacher, in season and out of season, according 
to the ability that God gives him, to speak “‘to the people all the 
words of this Life.” He was indeed a gospeler who wrote out 
of the fullness of his heart: “Necessity is laid upon me; for woe 
is me if I preach not the gospel. . . . I have a stewardship 
intrusted to me.”” And so likewise are those who have their suc- 
cession from him. 

(5) It is apostolic. The name is true. Because it connotes not 
only essentially the same inner vocation, the same truth of redemp- 
tion, and the same gift of preaching that came to the Apostles who 
saw the Lord, but also essentially the same spirit of love and 
labor that was in them. When Francis Asbury, the pioneer 
Protestant bishop of the New World, would tell upon what he 


*Rom. xii. 6-8. 8). Gor ax: 10, ¥7- 


314 Christianity as Organized 


rested his authority as a superintendent, or bishop, in the Church, 
he dared to say, among other things: “Because the signs of an 
apostle have been seen in me.” Probably no one who knew his 
career would have been disposed to doubt this fact. And was it 
not the best possible proof of a truly divine authority? To brave 
all dangers, to practice all self-denials, to spend one’s strength 
from youth to old age in prayer and the ministry of the word, 
to care through long years for the widely separated churches, 
homeless yet happy, as poor yet making many rich, till one is 
able to look in the faces of fellow-Christians in many regions 
and say, “The seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord’—it 
is this spirit of love and labor, rather than any ordaining hands, 
that will mark one’s office and ministry as genuinely apostolic. 


Moreover, this apostolic succession, evangelic not priestly, 
spiritual not legal, catholic not exclusive, scriptural rather than 
ecclesiastic, proclaiming the complete brotherhood of all who 
trust the one Christ as Lord and Saviour, makes not for division 
but for unity in the Church of God. 


XIII. 
THE BISHOP: FROM DIOCESAN. TO POPE. 


THE propension toward external catholic unity was not sat- 
ished with the little bishoprics of the second and third centuries. 
Might it not find a common center, here and there, about which 
not congregations but bishoprics themselves could be grouped? 
At any rate, it began to feel its way toward some such larger 
embodiment. Much more naturally than the deacons’ office 
called for an archdeacon and the presbyters’ office for an arch- 
presbyter, did the bishops’ office call for an archbishop. 


I. ORIGIN OF THE ARCHBISHOP. 


In response to such a demand, the provincial councils ren- 
dered an important service. For by the beginning of the third 
century these councils had begun to be held with some degree 
of frequency, and were attended by all the bishops of a province. 
Reasonably enough the chief city of a province, the metropolis, 
was the chosen place of meeting. And who should preside over 
their proceedings? At first the senior bishop of those in attend- 
ance was frequently elected president; but afterwards it came to 
be the custom to select for the presidency the pastor of the 
church in which the council met. So this host of the council, 
this bishop of the church in the metropolis, acquired a distinction 
among his fellow-bishops, and after a time, developing as he did 
into the metropolitan, or archbishop,’ became a distinct center of 
unity for the province. 

For example, we see Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, calling 


*The metropolitan usually went by the name of archbishop, but the title 
of archbishop was given also to the patriarch when he arose, and indeed it 
seems to have been somewhat of a floating title. But “the distinction be- 
tween an archbishop and a metropolitan has died out, and no difference ex- 
cept that which is nominal exists between them.” (Blunt, “Dictionary of 
Doctrinal and Historical Theology,” Art. “Archbishop.”) In the East the 
name now regularly used is metropolitan; in the West, archbishop. 


(315) 


316 Christianity as Organized 


councils of all the bishops of the province to decide certain grave 


questions of discipline. This he did in virtue of his metropolitan — 


position. To preside in such councils, to communicate their de- 
cisions to the presiding bishops of other provinces, to take the 
leading part in episcopal ordinations, to act as arbiter in the case 
of a contested episcopal election—these were the metropolitan’s 
other principal duties. He was arch-bishop. And thus a more 
_ general superintendence of the Church’s territory was effected. 


2. ORIGIN OF THE PaTRIARCHATE, 


But the ideal was not yet attained: the process of centraliza- 
tion must still go on. Let the metropolitans, in their turn, be 
united under a chief. And this, like the previous step, was fa- 
vored by the organization of the civil government. For under 
Constantine the Great the empire had been laid off for admin- 
istrative purposes into dioceses, each of which included two or 
more provinces; and so the bishop of the chief city of one of 
these political dioceses, or in some instances of two or more dio- 
ceses combined, claimed a position of oversight with respect to 
his fellow-metropolitans, corresponding in a general way to that 
of the metropolitans with respect to the bishops over whom they 
presided. He became what might have been called an “arch- 
metropolitan.” The Council of Nice (325) recognized this de- 
velopment, and decreed that the “ancient custom’ should still 
be observed—namely, that “the bishop of Alexandria have rule 
over all these [the provinces of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis], 
since this also is customary with the bishop of Rome; likewise 
also at Antioch let the churches retain their privileges.” 

Now the territory over which each of these chief metropolitans 
presided was called in ecclesiastical, as well as in political, lan- 
guage a diocese. About the same time the territory of an or- 
dinary bishop, which had hitherto been called a “parish,” came 
to be known in the West as a diocese; and perhaps a little later 
the same name was given to the territory of a metropolitan, or 


1Council of Nice, can. vi. 


Ve 


ee 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope sR 17 


archbishop. So at this time there were no fewer than three ter- 
ritorial divisions of the Church, related to each other as includ- 
ing and included, that bore the name “diocese.” Let us not get 
them confused: there was the diocese of the chief metropolitan, 
that of the metropolitan, or archbishop, and that of the ordinary 
bishop, or as he came to be called the suffragan (assistant to the 
archbishop). With the word in the latter two senses—the dio- 
cese of the archbishop and the diocese of the ordinary bishop, 
or suffragan—we are still familiar. 

Now the chief metropolitans were, after a time, called patri- 
archs—a name which had formerly been given as an honorary 
title to bishops in general, and by way of eminence to the bishop 
of Alexandria; and their dioceses were more specifically desig- 
nated as patriarchates. 

Over a hundred years after the Niczean Council, the Council 
of Chalcedon (451) marked the completion of the patriarchal 
system by recognizing five distinct and coordinate patriarchates 
—namely, Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusa- 
lem. Of these, however, Jerusalem was more honorary than 
actual.” 

What powers, over and above those of the metropolitan, was 
the patriarch permitted to exercise? He could ordain metropol- 
itans, convoke and preside over councils of his patriarchate, re- 
ceive appeals from metropolitan councils or metropolitan bish- 
ops, censure metropolitan bishops and in some cases their suf- 
fragans. These were his chief functions.” 


3. PRE-EMINENCE OF THE ROMAN PATRIARCH. 


And now as to the relation of these patriarchs among them- 
selves. Should they stand exactly coequal in office, or should 
one of them take a position of presidency and leadership toward 


1The patriarch of Jerusalem did not preside over a whole diocese—only 
over Palestine and Arabia. Nor did the patriarch of Antioch preside over 
quite the whole of the vast diocese of fifteen provinces in which his see was 
situated. 

?Alzog, “Universal Church History’ (E. T.), I. 668; Blunt, Dict, His- 


‘torical and Doctrinal Theology, Art. “Archbishop.” 


318 Christianity as Organized 


the rest? Should there be an arch-patriarch? Here again the 
principle of external unity called for some sort of episcopal 
primacy. 

Nor was there any reason for hesitation as to who the chosen 
chief should be. The patriarch of Jerusalem? No; the holy 
ancient Jerusalem was no more. Its site, desecrated by pagan 
temples and statues and in possession of a pagan colony, had 
been named after a pagan emperor’s family and a god of Rome 
—/Elia Capitolina. Not until the fourth century did it begin to 
win back its own sacred and beautiful name. And, what was in- 
finitely worse, Israel as a race had rejected Jesus their Messiah. 
They were not Christians. Accordingly, as we have seen, the 
patriarchate of Jerusalem was chiefly nominal. Then, too, Jeru- 
salem was out of the way, not central to the Church and the 
Empire. If a governmental and strategic center was to be 
chosen for the Church, it could not be in the far Land of 
Israel. 

Might the bishop of Ephesus, then, or of Corinth or of Alex- 
andria be made universal patriarch? These were not universal 
cities. There was but one. Rome, therefore, had no serious 
rival. It had already given its name to the Empire, and now 
was to cherish the dream of giving it in like manner to the 
Church. 

All roads led to Rome: everybody went there. Especially did 
Christians meet together there from all countries. For Rome 
was the capital of the Empire, which was the civilized world. © 
It had a population of perhaps two and a half millions, but that 
was comparatively a small matter: it was “the great city which 
reigneth over the kings of the earth,” the central seat of the 
King-people, the world-city. East and West, men had long been 
accustomed to look toward it for judgment, authority, law. “I 
appeal unto Cesar,” said Paul the Jew (though also a freeborn 
Roman), beset by his enemies in Palestine. “Unto Czesar,” re- 
plied the procurator, “shalt thou go.” 

Now let us remember that the Church had been laying off her 
territory along the lines of the imperial administration—had been 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope 319 


doing so, some have thought, from apostolic days." But more 
than this: in the fourth century Christianity was officially recog- 
nized as the religion of the Empire—which meant the religion of 
the civilized world regarded as under the headship of Rome. If, 
therefore, the bishop of such a city as Carthage, for example, 
might claim precedence over the other bishops of the province, 
and if the bishop of such a city as Alexandria might claim prece- 
dence over the other metropolitan bishops of the civil diocese, 
so likewise might the bishop of such a city as Rome claim prece- 
dence over the other chief bishops of all the civil dioceses, and 
thus become patriarch of patriarchs. 

In this same connection it might be remarked that the patri- 
archal see of Antioch was held in higher honor than that of Jeru- 
salem, the see of Alexandria than that of Antioch, and the see 
of Constantinople, or New Rome, when it arose, in higher honor 
than that of any of the other three—each greater city com- 
manding the greater honor for its episcopal see. Why, then, 
should not the same rule apply to Old Rome, the chief city of 
the Empire and the world? 

Indeed, the case was stronger. For the church in Rome was 
the only church of apostolic origin in the West; it was highly 
commended in the great inspired Epistle to the Romans,’ it was 
sanctified by the blood of martyrs—yes, of a goodly succession 
of martyrs. Had not pagan Rome made herself “drunk with the 
blood of the saints?” Men like Ignatius and the monk Telem- 
achus had even journeyed from the far East, “following a 
hundred sunsets,” on to Rome, there to lay down their lives for 
Christ. Had not even the two chief Apostles, Peter and Paul, 
made the soil of the great Christian city sacred with their wit- 
nessing blood? 

But still more, the Roman see had been founded, according to 
the general belief, by the Apostle Peter, and from him in regular 
order its subsequent bishops were supposed to have descended. 
The bishop of Rome, then, was accepted both in Rome itself and 
elsewhere as in the Petrine succession. But Peter held the high- 


*Ramsay, “St. Paul the Traveler,” pp 135, 136. *Rom, i. 8-12, 


320 Christianity as Organised 


est place among the original Twelve. Christ had said to him: 
“Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church.” 
Was it not, therefore, more than fitting, was it not the revealed — 
will of Christ—so it began to be asked about the beginning of 

the third century or sooner—that Peter’s successor in the see of 

Rome should be chief bishop to the whole Church? For Peter’s 
primacy, it was assumed, must be regarded as official and trans- 
missible, not merely personal. . 

It is true, this belief that Peter was bishop of Rome—“for | 
twenty-five years, one month, and nine days,” the legend runs— 
and that he started a line of successors immediately from him-_ 
self, was groundless. So far from having this Apostle for its 
first bishop and the founder of an episcopal line, there is good 
reason to believe that the church in Rome had no bishop at all, 
except the presbyter-bishops, till the second quarter of the second 
century. But the legend of Peter’s Chair was believed, like a 
thousand others, upon no basis of historic proof and without 
questioning. And it produced the same effect upon the believer’s 
mind as if it had been a fact. 

Then, too, Rome was orthodox. Comparatively undisturbed 
by theological controversies, which raged for long periods of 
time in the East, Rome uniformly chose the side that proved to be 
dominant—as, for instance, in the long and passionate controver- 
sies that arose concerning the person of Christ the Saviour. Ire-— 
nus in his day had recommended that in difficult matters of con- 
troversy appeal ought to be made to “the very great, the very 
ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at 


q 


+Clement, writing in the name of the church in Rome to the church in 
Corinth, is silent as to a bishop in either city. Ignatius, writing, in the early 
part of the second century, to various churches, insists on obedience to the: 
bishop—except in the epistle to the Romans; and here he not only delivers: 
no such exhortation, but makes no mention of a bishop in their church at all. 
Hermas, in “The Pastor,” says, “Those who preside over the church [in 
Rome] ;” and again, “The old woman [the Church] asked me, if I had yet 
given the book to the presbyters. . . . But you will read the words in 
this city, along with the presbyters who preside over the church [in Rome].” 
(Vis, ii, 2, 4.) 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope 321 


Rome by the most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul ;”* and sub- 
sequent doctrinal decisions of this church, made through its bish- 
ops, served to increase its judicial teaching prestige and author- 
ity. For Rome taught rather than investigated, judged rather 
than debated, commanded rather than discussed. 

Yet we are not to think of the church at Rome in those early 
days as simply striving after authority over the other churches. 
Undoubtedly she did that, but she also cared for them. She was 
kind and beneficent toward them. There is proof of her sending 
contributions to supply the needs of distant congregations. Ig- 
natius, in the Salutation of his Epistle to the Roman Church, 
speaks of it not only as “the church which presides in the place 
of the region of the Romans,” but, among other additional 
things, as the church which “presides over love.” He even de- 
clares with characteristic fervor, “I am afraid of your love, lest 
it should be an injury”—lest it should incite them to prayers and 
efforts to prevent the martyrdom which he so eagerly coveted. 
In this most eminent and probably wealthiest of the Christian 
communities, there was something of the spirit of “the big broth- 


9 


er’ toward the other Christian communities throughout the 


world. Why should it not have awakened in noble minds some 


responsive spirit of gratitude and reverence? Or to ignoble 
minds this same wealth and beneficence of Rome might suggest 
as a motive “‘the thrift that follows fawning.” 


“Against Heresies,” III., 3, 2. Irenzus’s reference to the founding of 
this church, it will be noted, is contrary to the facts as given in the Epistle 
of Paul to the Romans. See especially ch. i. 13-15. 

?Not, however, that this rule was without any exception. It seems certain, 
for example, that the Roman bishop Liberius (352-361) subscribed a semi- 
Arian creed, and that Honorius I. (621-636) accepted and taught the Monoth- 
elite heresy, for which he was anathematized by the Sixth General Coun- 
cil, and at the same time by the pope, Leo II., who not only signed the De- 
crees but renewed the anathema upon the heretical pope—damaging facts to 
the modern decree of papal infallibility. Alzog speaks, from the Roman 
Catholic view-point, of “the imprudent course of Pope Honorius in the case 
of the Monothelites,’” and ventures to say that, “though expressing himself 
inaccurately, he thought correctly.” (“Universal Church History,” Vol. I., pp. 
635, 636.) But the apology is made in the face of sun-clear facts, 


21 


— 


322 Christianity as Organized 


By such considerations as these, then, the idea of an ecclesias- 
tical headship at Rome would be strongly commended. Nor does 
it seem to have met with any marked opposition. The Christian 
leaders, both theological and administrative, were ready to en- 
dorse it." 

Let the single example of Cyprian be taken as representative 
here of the early centuries. Strenuously resisting any assump- 
tion, on the part of the Roman see, of a supremacy of jurisdic- 
tion, he would nevertheless ascribe to it, for the sake of unity 
and in accordance with what were accepted by him as scriptural 
and historic facts, a certain primacy. “That he might set forth 
unity,” writes the illustrious Carthaginian pastor, “he arranged 
by his authority the origin of that unity as beginning from one. 
Assuredly the rest of the Apostles were the same as was Peter, in- 
dorsed with a like authority both of honor and of power; but the 
beginning proceeds from unity.’’” It must be carefully borne in 
mind, however, that the primacy, or “beginning from unity,” 
here indicated, is strictly one of honor and not of authority. 

Nor was it only individual leaders in the Church that acknowl- 
edged the primacy of Rome. The General Councils, speaking 
with supreme authority, did the same. The Council of Constan- 
tinople (381) declared that the bishop of Constantinople should 
be honored next to the bishop of Rome, and the Council of 
Chalcedon (451), referring to this action, did itself “enact and 
decree the same things concerning the privileges of the most holy 
Church of Constantinople, which is New Rome.” 

With utter silence as to Roman jurisdiction, these Councils did 
have a word to say for Roman primacy of honor. 


4Some of them, outside the Roman communion, would be ready to in- 
dorse it at the present time: “Though we would grant the Church of Rome 
her ancient primacy,” says an English bishop, “yet we cannot accept it as now 
offered, transformed into a quasi-sacramental headship.” 

2“On the Unity of the Church,” 4. Cf. Ep. XXXIX. (XLIL), 5. 

“The bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of 
honor after the bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome,” 
(Council of Constantinople, Can. III.) 

‘Council of Chalcedon, Can, XXVIII. 


ee —————eEeEeEeeeeeeeereoree 


EEE 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope 323 


4. THE MONARCHICAL CLAIM OF ROME. 


Here, then, emerges what might be looked upon as a completely 
organized system of universal government: the General Council 
the supreme legislative and judicial authority (for such it had 
come to be), and the bishop of Rome the first bishop of the 
Church. Could it be reasonably objected to or broken up? 
Should it not be perpetuated through the after ages? 

However such a question may be answered, it is certain that 
the system was not perpetuated. And the main immediate cause 
of its failure was the monarchical aggressions of Rome itself. 
The bishop of that venerable imperial city and occupant of the 
so-called chair of Peter would not consent to be first among 
equals in the oligarchy of patriarchs. He must have supremacy 
of jurisdiction, ruling alone, the visible monarch of the Kingdom 
of Christ. To become one of the “five towers,” as Dr. Philip 
Schaff has called the Patriarchs, “in the edifice of the Catholic 
hierarchy of the Greco-Roman Empire,’ would have seemed, 
according to his conception, to be fixing himself in a false atti- 
tude. Not a tower, he was the one rock upon which the Chris- 
tian Ecclesia had been built. Hence the Roman bishop refused 
to be called patriarch, as a mere oligarchical title, and in due 
time appropriated the monarchical title of pope. 

Not, of course, that this titl—applied preéminently to the 
bishop of Rome about the year 500—was in itself monarchical. 
In its common meaning it was farther from monarchism than 
was the title “patriarch.” It was simply the child’s name for 
“father” (papa), and it is even now given familiarly to all 
priests in the Russian Church—just as Roman priests also are, 
more seriously, called “father.’”* 

Does ‘‘papa” seem a humble title for the great Roman patri- 
arch, claiming universality of dominion, to take? So also was 
“emperor” (imperator, general, commander-in-chief) a com- 


1In the West it had been applied from very early times to bishops, and 
afterwards to patriarchs, as bishops by way of eminence, first fathers. But 
“patriarch” was here the official designation; and on this account the bishop 
of Rome refused to share it. 


324 Christianity as Organized 


paratively humble title as assumed by Augustus Cesar; but it~ 
soon disclosed a significance above that of “king.” 

The development of the papacy was intermittent but persistent. 
From the latter part of the second century onward the Roman 
bishops were prone to put forth acts or pursue courses of action © 
that implied the right to monarchical rulership in the whole 
Church. Victor I, about the year 196, declared the Asian 
churches, which, against his judgment and will, celebrated the 
Easter festival on the day of the Jewish passover, to be cut 
off from the common unity of the Church—an event which has 
been described as marking “the true birthday of the papacy.” 
Stephen I. (253-257) acted in a similar manner toward the North 
African churches, in the rebaptism controversy. Siricius, in 
385, issued an ordinance of clerical celibacy, which has the dis- 
tinction of being known as the first papal decretal. Innocent I. 
(402-417), a canonized saint, claimed the right to be heard in 
all the more important causes; and it was the pronouncement of 
his judgment in the Pelagian controversy that caused Augustine, — 
his greatest contemporary, to exclaim: “Rome has spoken, the © 
cause is concluded.’”’ Such were some of the aggressive acts that 
foretokened, during a period of two and a half centuries, the © 
coming of “the first pope,”’ Leo the Great. 


5. Leo THE GREAT AS FOUNDER OF THE PAPACY. 


It was in the person of Leo the Great (440-461) that the full 
“papal consciousness” found its first historic expression. Of the 
circumstances of this typical churchman’s birth and death noth- — 
ing is known. The outlines of his public career, however, have 
been well attested. Leo, though by no means of a philosophic 
temperament, had ability as a systematic theologian. What he 
saw he saw clearly. Untroubled with doubts and speculations, ~ 
he got a firm grasp upon a system of dogmatic divinity. He 
was also something of a preacher—the first bishop of Rome, so 
far as the record shows, of which as much may be said. 


1For an interesting explanation of the significance of the name “pope,” 
see Stanley, “Christian Institutions,” ch. xi., sec. 4. : 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope Boe 


But all this must serve as a background for Leo’s peculiar 
aptitude for administration. He knew how to rule with a com- 
manding, insistent, successful hand. The spirit, as described in 

_ one of his letters, in which he entered upon the episcopal office, 
was indeed most distrustful and devout: “For what is so un- 
wonted and so dismaying as labor to the frail, exaltation to the 
humble, dignity to the undeserving? And yet we do not despair 
nor lose heart, because we put our trust not in ourselves but in 
Him who works in us.” But the “labor” which Leo believed that 

_ even one so “frail” as he was called to undergo was the care and 
tulership of the universal Church. Personally he confessed the 
deepest unworthiness ; officially he held that men could resist his 
mandates only at the peril of their souls.* 

To accept an honorable primacy was not in the least of this 
Roman bishop’s thoughts. He cared to claim nothing less than 
a spiritual dictatorship, an episcopal Czsarism. And yet of per- 
sonal ambition he showed no sign. 

Indeed, there need be no doubt of the strength and sincerity 
of Leo’s convictions, nor of the inflexible resoluteness with which, 
through a pontificate of twenty-one years, he gave them effect. 
This “first of the popes” was a man of one absorbing idea, which 

- found expression in one intolerant and unrelenting purpose. His 

_ significance in the development of the papacy has been likened to 

: that of Cyprian in the development of the sacerdotal episcopacy. 
He lived that he might make Rome what he supposed she was 

_ divinely intended to become, the center of unity and authority 

_ for the Christian world. For verily he believed that it was the 

_very wisdom of God that this greatest of cities should have 

_ gained and maintained her vast empire for the express purpose 

that, when Christianity came, she might have the facilities and 

the power to bestow it upon all the nations of the earth. And if 

so, what could be plainer than that the bishop of Rome should 
preside over and direct the Christian world-movement ? 


*“Vet any one who holds that the headship must be denied to Peter cannot 
really diminish his dignity, but is puffed up with the breath of pride, and 
plunges himself into the lowest depth.” (Ep. X., 2.) 


326 Christianity as Organized 


As to the course of action by which Leo sought to do his prov- 
idential part in the achievement of this stupendous purpose, four 
noteworthy illustrations may be mentioned: (1) The churches 
of North Africa, which had enjoyed the mintstrations of such 
eminent teachers as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, were 
brought under his control—for there was no Cyprian now to re- 
sist his encroachments. He demanded that the decisions of their 
councils be sent him for confirmation, and that their bishops 
should have the right of appeal from the court of their metro- 
politans to the court of Rome. This right of appeal, indeed, he 
established throughout the West and claimed for the whole 
Church. (2) In Gaul a bishop had been deposed by a council 
under the direction of Hilary of Arles, the primate’ of the Gal- 
lican Church. The deposed bishop appealed to Rome, and was 


restored to his office; and Hilary’s jurisdiction was restricted to 


his own province. (3) Through Leo’s influence, as may be be- 
lieved, the feeble Emperor Valentinian III. issued an edict de- 
claring the primacy of Rome, and forbidding “the bishops of 
Gaul, as well as those of other provinces,” to make any innova- 
tion on the established order in their churches “without the au- 
thority of the venerable Father of the Eternal City.” (4) The 
Council of Chalcedon was presided over by Leo, in the person 
of his legates, and its decision of the great Christological con- 
troversy was, in a very appreciable measure, determined by a 
letter from his hand to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople. 
“Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo,” shouted the Council on 
the reading of this letter. And the canons of the Council were 
sent him for confirmation. 

To Leo the Great, more than to any other one man—if it be 
not idle to draw such comparisons—the Church of Rome is in- 
debted for her ecclesiastical dominion through the Middle Ages 
and unto the twentieth century. 


*“Primates . . . are constituted by the Church with the consent of the 
State, such as the primate of Germany (Nuremberg), of Spain (Toledo), of 
France (Lyons), . . . of England (Canterbury and York). . ..A 


primate presides over the ecclesiastical capital of a country, and properly is 


y 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope 327 


6. THE PAPAL COMPARED WITH THE CyPRIANIC CLAIM. 


And now before passing from this topic let us give a moment’s 
distinct attention to the ground on which the assertion of Roman 
ecclesiastic supremacy, thus fully developed, rested. It was 
closely similar to the ground on which the claim of monarchic 
episcopacy rested. The Church, said Cyprian two hundred years 
before—speaking for himself and the High Churchmen of all 
ages—is in the bishops; for only through them the grace of God 
is sacramentally mediated to the people. No bishops, no Church. 
But Leo, speaking for himself and the papists of all ages, de- 
clared that the Church is in the pope. For Peter alone received 
ministerial power immediately from Christ and mediated it to 
the line of his successors, the bishops of Rome. No pope, no 
Church.” The essential difference, therefore, between the High 
Church and the papal dogma is, that the one finds an indis- 
pensable succession of coequal bishops from the whole body of 
Apostles, while the other finds an indispensable succession of 
universal bishops from the chief of the Apostles. 

But again, are we to suppose that these repeated aggressions 
of Rome were quietly acquiesced in by the churchmen of those 
early days? On the contrary, they were strenuously resisted— 
in the East never really submitted to. Said Polycrates, the ven- 
erable bishop of Ephesus, in answer to the edict of Victor I. in 
the Easter controversy: “I am not affrighted by terrifying words, 
for those greater than I have said, ‘We ought to obey God rather 
than man.’’”* Said the first great Latin father, Tertullian, con- 
cerning the same violent edict: “O edict, on which cannot be in- 


the superior of many archbishops.” (Blunt, Dict. of Historical and Doc- 
trinal Theology, Art. “Archbishop.” ) 

“But this mysterious function [the spreading of Christian truth for the 
salvation of the world] the Lord wished indeed to be the concern of all 


_ the Apostles, but in such a way that he has placed the principal charge on 


the blessed Peter, chief of all the Apostles; and from him as from the Head 
wishes his gifts to flow to all the body; so that any one who dares to secede 
from Peter’s solid rock may understand that he has no part nor lot in the 
divine mystery.” (Leo, Ep. X. 1.) 

?Eusebius, H. E., V. xxiv. 7. 


328 Christianity as Organized 


scribed, ‘Good deed.’”* But again let us take Cyprian as the 
most significant example. When the bishop of Rome, Stephen 
I., endeavored to enforce his decision of the question of re- 
baptism upon the churches of North Africa, Cyprian, from his 
metropolitan position among them, opposed Stephen with all the 
powers at his command. At one of the North African councils 
called by him to consider the matter, Cyprian, with his colleagues, 
wrote a letter to Stephen—addressing him as an equal only, 
“dearest brother’”—in which they reminded him, with mingled 
kindly respect and firmness of judgment, that “each prelate has 
in the administration of the Church his will free, as he shall give 
account of himself to the Lord.’* Not to a bishop of bishops— 
“for no one of us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or by 
tyrannical terror forces his colleagues to obeying’’—but to the 
Lord only was any bishop, prominent or obscure, in city or — 
hamlet, to give account of his official administration. 

But in the West such protests availed very little—ultimately — 
nothing at all. For the bishops had already prepared the way, 
unconsciously—and none had done it more effectually than the 
illustrious bishop of Carthage himself—for these very usurpa- — 
tions of the Roman see. When they said, “The bishops are ec- 
clesiastical monarchs, they are the Church’s bond of unity, they 
are its head,” it was inevitable that the ambitious organizing 
genius of Rome should answer: “They? Why, there can be 
no common headship in numerous independent monarchs, here 
and there. That would be intolerable. The head must be one, 
and who can that one be but the bishop of Rome, who is already ~ 
accepted by you all as the successor of Peter, the primate of the 
original Apostles of the Lord Christ? There can be no headship — 
but in jim.” And as to the bishops, they were only realizing 
practically the logic of their own autocratic position.” 


*“On Modesty,” I. *Cyprian, Ep. LXXI. (LXXILI), 3. 

®The yielding of the High-church theory and practice to the papal, over 
so large a part of the Church’s territory, finds an analogue in the political 
sphere when, as in the case of Western Medieval Europe, a feudal system 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope 320 


7. THE PAPACY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 


It is unnecessary in this outline study to follow the course of 
the papacy through the Middle Ages. In fact, there was no es- 
sential departure, at least in the strictly ecclesiastical sphere, from 
the lines of procedure that Leo and his successors had marked 
out. Not even his ablest and most influential successor for the 
next six hundred years—namely, Gregory the Great (590-604),° 
father of the medieval papacy, advanced any additional claim. 
On the contrary, Gregory seemed less inclined than Leo to assert 
the monarchic idea. He severely rebuked John the Faster, bish- 
op of Constantinople, for styling himself “Universal Patriarch.” 
He calls the claim, whoever may make it, “blasphemous,” and 
declares that “no one has ever before used such a phrase or 
taken so daring an appellation.” As for himself, refusing a su- 
preme lordly title, he professes to be content that he should be 
called “servant of the servants of God’’—a title which successive 
popes have borne ever since. 

For as to the particular title of Universal Patriarch, the pope 
does not now and never did assume it. He only claims to be 
Patriarch of the Vest—but Universal Pontiff, Teacher, Judge, 
and Lord. The most moderate interpretation I have seen of the 
symbolism of the “triple crown” is, that it denotes supreme ec- 
clesiastical lordship over the diocese of Rome, the patriarchate 
of the West, and the whole world. 

Gregory was worthy of his posthumous title. He was “great,” 
not indeed intellectually, but in moral energy and goodness of 
character—both just and humane, both devout and diligent, pure 


is made to give way to a strong monarchical form of centralization. The 
principle involved in the two cases is the same—namely, the time-honored 
principle that in unity there is strength. The fundamental false principle is 
likewise the same—divine right. The possibilities of abuse, and of evil con- 
sequence also, are of the same general nature, only in the ecclesiastical 
sphere even more serious. 

*The only pope comparable to Gregory during this period was Nicolas I. 
(858-867)—an able and energetic administrator, using his office for the pro- 
motion of righteousness, “terrible to the evil-doer, whether prince or priest, 
yet mild to the good and obedient.” 


330 Christianity as Organized 


in life, missionary in spirit. ‘The last of the Fathers,’ he has 
been called, because of his somewhat voluminous writings on 
moral and religious themes. 

His errors were the errors of an unenlightened age, and the 
one foul blot on his record may be partly explained, though not — 
excused, by his superstitious devotion to Rome as identical with 
the cause of Christ on earth. His moral indignation, therefore, 
at pride of office was doubtless genuine, and not a mere effer- 
vescence of jealousy toward the Patriarch of Constantinople. 
But as to the idea of papal prerogatives, he was at one with his — 
most imperious predecessors, Leo and the rest. He did not hesi- 
tate to claim that the see of Rome was divinely appointed to rule 
over the see of Constantinople, and all the others. “I know not 
what bishop is not subject to it,” he wrote in one of his letters, 
“if fault is found in him.” The pope, he held, inherited the 
office of Peter, to whom “was committed by our Lord the care 
of the whole Church.” In such a case the refusal to be called 
a universal father to the Church wouid hardly seem to be a 
healthful refinement of the spirit of humility. Indeed, Gregory 
might have consented to be called at the same time both father 
and servant; for where may a truer example of servanthood be 
found than in the relation of the father and mother to the child? 

Besides, this humble choice of a title for the papacy must not 
be taken too seriously, because it is quite possible for true great- 
ness, whether in monk or in bishop (and Gregory was both), to 
be marred by an affectation of humility. There is often so wide 
a difference between sound and sense, between the look of a thing 
and the thing itself. It may sound like a humble word when 
the pope speaks of his throne as the chair of the fisherman, or 
look like a humble act when he washes the beggars’ feet in Holy 
Week, or seem like a humble subscription when a gentleman 
signs himself the “obedient servant’ of his correspondent; but 
for an example of real humility one would be instinctively in- 
clined to look otherwhere.* 


“Gregory the Great,” says a Roman Catholic historian, “desirous of put- 
ting an end to such contentions, set an example of humility, and called him- 


Bishop: From Diocesan to Pope sat 


The simple truth is, that not only John the Faster and Gregory 
the Great but the bishops of Constantinople and the bishops of 
Rome, generally speaking, in those formative centuries, illustrate 
a state of things of which the classic example is that of Pompey 
and Czsar. The Constantinopolitans could bear no superior, the 
Romans no equal. 


8. A REVERSAL OF THE ORDER OF HIsToRIC FACTS. 


The papal claim offers a colossal example of reversal in the 
order of historic facts. The local congregation, the presbyters, 
the bishop, the pope—such is the succession in the chief govern- 
ing officers of the Church, according to the witness of history. 
The pope preceding all, with bishops and presbyters created by 
him, and the congregation left with no right or power of gov- 
ernment whatever—such is the teaching of Rome. The history 
is indeed read backwards. 

Shall we then denounce the makers of the papacy as evil- 
minded usurpers, shamelessly denying indisputable facts, deliber- 
ately “speaking lies in hypocrisy,” and ruthlessly trampling upon 
the God-given rights of Christ’s people, on the way to their coy- 
eted throne? It would be a narrow and uncharitable judg- 
ment. 

Agegressors, usurpers they undoubtedly were. The bishops of 
Rome had no more right to subject the whole world to their 
official control, by appeals to the Christian conscience and the 
free use of supernatural terrors, than had the emperors of Rome 
to reduce the whole world to submission by the less deeply pier- 
cing weapon of the sword. But we may not meet these early 
bishops of the Eternal City, in criticism or argument, with any 
sweeping denial of sincerity of belief and purpose. If John 


self ‘the servant of the servants of God’ (servus servorum Dei), which has 
always been retained by his successors, who in this follow the counsel of 
Christ: ‘He that is greater among you, let him become servant of all.’”’ 
(Alzog, “Universal Church History,” I., 675.) But the counsel of the Master 
is that the greater should “become” servant of all, between which and “calling 
himself’ servant of all, the difference is wide indeed. And is there any 
worse pride than “proud humility?” 


333 Christianity as Organized 


Knox or John Wesley, with his unquestioned purity of character, 
had been placed in the position and surroundings of Leo or 
Gregory, it is by no means insupposable that he would have at- 
tempted similar things in government to those which these un- 
relenting prelates undertook; and would have made the attempt 
not for his own exaltation, but for the guardianship of the faith 
and the advancement of the Church.’ 

Ecclesiastic sincerity does not imply even ordinary exegetic 
gifts. On occasion its interpretations of Scripiure may no more 
set forth the teaching of the passage than the magician’s rib- 
bons, flags, and fluttering birds set forth the contents of the be- 
wildered spectator’s pocket in which he pretends to find them. It 
may easily accept legend as history, when legend seems to be 
promotive of the Church’s welfare. It may sometimes be found 
as the mate of the very audacity of ignorance. In conjunction 
with fanaticism it is likely to tear and slay as the most cruel of 
plagues that the world has ever known. 

Moreover, sincerity exists, like all other virtues, in different 
degrees of perfection. It may silently crown a whole life with 
splendor, or, again, it may be, like Jacob in the prophet’s vision, 
with difficulty able to stand, “because it is small.’’ But it is ab- 
solutely essential to moral or Christian manhood, and will not 
be lightly denied even to extreme errorists by the enlightened and 
generous mind. Were not John Henry Newman and other lead- 
ers of the Tractarian Movement “men of heart sincere?’ Throw- 
ing up indefensible breastworks of papal authority against the 
action of that universal and God-given reason which they dread- 
ed as a deadly foe to even theistic faith—were they not following 
conscience? “I verily thought with myself that I ought to do 
many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.” 


“Tf T had known St. Francis, I hope I should have had grace enough to 
become a Franciscan friar and to serve the Lady Poverty. If destiny had put 
me on the chair of St. Peter, I hope I should have made a good fight against 
the encroachments of the secular power on the sacred heritage of Christ and 
the vicar of Christ. But being a twentieth-century Christian, I hope I shall 
do nothing of the kind.” (Rauschenbusch, “Christianity and the Social 
Crisis,” p. 20T.) 


XIV. 


THE BISHOP: THE PAPACY. 


THE monarchical papacy succeeded in becoming Roman Cath- 
olic, but nothing more. Catholic it has never been. For while 
no one, at least in the earlier centuries, may have cared to dispute 
the idea of a Roman primacy, there have always been many to 
ignore or reject the idea of a Roman constitutional supremacy. 

We have noted the antagonism of individual bishops and of 
particular churches to such an idea. But more significant still 
was the legislation of the General Councils. These Councils, con- 
vened not by the pope but by the emperor, knew nothing whatever 
of a supreme teacher, ruler, and judge of Christendom. As we 
have seen, they do ascribe to the Roman patriarch a precedence 
of honor, because of the glory of ancient Rome, and to the pa- 
triarch of Constantinople the next honorable place, because of 
the glory of New Rome; but to neither do they ascribe any right 
of dictation or jurisdiction. In a word, the general govern- 
ment of the Church sanctioned by the General Councils distinctly 
excluded monarchy of any sort. 

This non-papal conciliar legislation would seem to be con- 
clusive as to the mind of the Church. 


I. CONSTANTINOPLE’S POSITION. 


It was in harmony with such legislation that papal monarchism 
was rejected, both early and late, by the Christianity of the 
East. The see of Rome was left to hear whatever appeals might 
be brought before it, to exert whatever influence it could through- 
out Christendom, and to gather the whole West under its gov- 
emmental authority ; and all this it did, but nothing more. 

In the East, Constantinople took the place of honor assigned it 
with reference to the other three patriarchates. 


(333) 


334 Christianity as Organized 


At first, however, there was some opposition on the part of the 
older patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch to this arrange- 
ment. The church in Alexandria was founded, according to tra- 
dition, by the evangelist Mark, and Antioch was the first see of 
the apostle Peter himself; but when and by whom was the church 
in Constantinople (Byzantium) founded? Alexandria—whose 
patriarch was called, because of his pretensions and of his real 
power, “the ecclesiastical Pharaoh”—showed great jealousy, 
especially during the episcopate of the hot-headed Cyril, of the 
rising power of the new patriarchal see. But the dissatisfaction 
subsided; for was not Constantinople the capital of the East, — 
even as Rome was the capital of the West? Moreover, was she 
not distinctively Christian Rome, founded by the Christian Em- 
peror, and unstained from the first by the sin of idolatry? Let 
her rest without disturbance, cheerfully acknowledged, in her 
primacy not of constitutional prerogative but of honorable dis- 
tinction. 

Already, therefore, the Catholic Church is virtually broken in 
twain. Two great ecclesiastical centers have established them- 
selves, one on the Tiber, the other on the Bosphorus—though the 
formal and final separation awaits the lapse of some centuries. — 
For it is not until July 16, 1054, that the papal legates, standing 
in the great church of St. Sophia, lay upon its altar, from the © 
hand of the pope, the fearful anathema of Rome: “Let them be 
Anathema Maranatha, with Simoniacs, Valerians, Arians, Do-— 
natists, Nicolaitans, Severians, Pneumatomachi, Manichees, and 
Nazarenes, and with all heretics; yea, with the devil and his 
angels. Amen. Amen. Amen.” 


2. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PAPAL CLAIM IN THE WEST. 


Papal Rome, like her pagan predecessor, had the spirit and 
the gift of government.” Not of thought, not of original re- 


1We see a significant foretoken of this even in the last decade of the first 
century. Clement writes a letter from Rome, and in the name of the whole 
Roman Church—“the Church of God which sojourns at Rome”—to try by 
good counsel and admonition to quiet a state of disorder which exists in — 


Bishop: The Papacy 385 


search. This was the genius of Greece. It was the subtle think- 
ers of the East who took the lead in theology. They chiefly were 
influential in framing the early Christian creeds. The imprint 
that Christian doctrine received from the Latin theologians—as, 
for instance, from Tertullian and Augustine—was legal rather 
than spiritual, and practical rather than speculative. Broadly 
speaking, the Greek mind tended to dwell upon the Divine Na- 
ture, the Latin mind upon the nature, salvation, and conduct of 
man; the Greeks would find God, the Latins would govern men. 
The Greek, given to the prolonged exercise of reason, meditated ; 
the Roman, putting forth his will, acted. It had been so from 
the beginning. When Rome flung forth her armies to reduce 
the world to her will, 
The East bowed low beneath the blast 
In patient, deep disdain; 
She let the legions thunder past, 
And plunged in thought again. 

So the popes that rose into any kind of greatness—most of 
them do not seem to have risen above mediocrity—showed them- 
selves great as ecclesiastics, organizers, administrators. Through 
them the doomed Imperial City was rehabilitating itself in the 
ecclesiastical realm. It was from Greece that Rome had re- 
ceived her philosophy, but it was of herself that she felt the con- 
sciousness of power, the instinct of conquest and government. 
Never before had it taken place, but in one instance it did take 
_ place, that a single city, even pagan Rome, should rule the world. 
And it was now a similar course of conquest and despotic rule, 
and with a similar consciousness of power, in the sphere of the 
soul, upon which papal Rome was entering. 

Nor was the opportunity lacking." The age of martyrdom had 
passed; the less glorious age of controversy which followed it 


the Church of God in Corinth. His epistle consists chiefly of brotherly ex- 
hortation, but not without some tone of authority: “Ye therefore who laid 
_ the foundations of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, so as to 
repent, bending the knees of the heart.” (Ch. 57.) 
1Tt is not unworthy of remark that, with the removal of the seat of gov- 
ernment from Rome to Constantinople, one great negatiye condition to papal 


336 Christianity as Organized 


was also spending its force; the orthodox faith had been form- 
ulated and was regnant; and a new world just beginning to be 
Christianized lay before the chair of Peter. Already the East 
had begun to stagnate. Its civilizations were decadent; its fee- 
ble church-life, slavishly subservient to the civil power, would 
soon be crushed beneath the iron hoof of Islam. The four pa- 
triarchs were there, each with his territory delimited, and no 
hopeful outlook beyond. But the patriarchs of Rome oversaw 
the whole West; and the West held the promise of the future. 
It was yet to be won; rather it was yet to be made. There was 
virgin soil, wild but rich and deep. There was the “wandering 
of the nations”—an irrepressible ethnic energy all uncultured and 
undirected. There were the German, the French, the English 
races in the making. 

The Western Empire was falling to pieces. We must think 
of it now as the South, and of destruction as coming out of the 
North. Men had been fain to look upon Rome as the Eternal 
City. Let her be destroyed, and—there was nothing more. As 
the ancient geographers made the ocean that lay beyond the line 
of up-to-date discovery the abode of all manner of doleful and 
destructive creatures, not to be intruded upon or even thought 
of, so the minds of men in that olden time, through centuries, 
refused to contemplate any sequel to the destruction of Rome. 
Such an event, if a possibility, must mean barbarism, ruin, the 


success was furnished. For the pope could carry out his own imperial pur- 
poses with a much freer hand when unembarrassed by the throne of the 
emperor beside his own. “Catholic writers are fond of considering the neg- 
lect in which the emperors left the Eternal City and the fall of the Eastern 
Empire as providential dispensations: they are right. Had the emperors re- 
mained in Rome or the popes followed them to Byzance, the papacy had never 
been what it became. A pope face to face with an autocrat is an anomal 
hardly to be conceived.” (Leroy-Beaulieu, “The Empire of the Tsars and 
the Russians,” Vol. IIT., p. 146.) 

*“The Council of Niczea had indeed defined the jurisdiction of the bish 
of Rome, but later councils which had gone on perfecting the ecclesiastical 
organization in the East paid little attention to the West, or, so far 
they had legislated at all, had inclined to recognize a certain vague suprem- 
acy of the bishop of Rome over the entire West.” (Allen, “Christian In 
stitutions,” p. 146.) 


Bishop: The Papacy 337 


end of the world.” True, it was an event that had been predicted 
in the New Testament. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great,” 
cried the “second angel” in the Apocalypse.” But if a Christian 
reader here and there recognized under the name Babylon the 
corrupt and cruel city of Pagan Rome, doubtless he saw in its 
fall one of the fearful signs that the end of all things was in- 
deed at hand. 

Yet when that which was regarded as either impossible or a 
part of the final catastrophe came to pass, a new and creative 
Fact appeared. When the spell that Rome had cast upon the 
minds of men, the hush of reverent awe that attended the men- 
tion of her name, even in the fierce forests of the North, was 
broken up, there stood forth another Rome to command a deeper 
reverence and to kindle a more controlling terror in the soul. 
In the place of the city of the Czsars rose the City of God. 
Just outside the walls of Rome, Attila the Hun, leading his in- 
numerable horde of savages, greedy and relentless as the grave, 
met Leo the Churchman—and turned away. There was no em- 
peror worthy of the name to meet—a few years, and there was 
not even a nominal emperor. The bishop whom he did meet was 
the real ruler of Rome, and the prototype of the real rulers, 
through many generations, of the Western world. If the papacy 
be called ““Rome’s ghost since her decease,” it must be acknowl- 
edged as a ghost more powerful and more long-lived than the 
original flesh-and-blood Rome herself. Or if, as again it has 
been said, “Rome no longer held the world by arms, but by 
men’s imaginations,” it was a grip upon their imaginations more 
effective by far than the stroke of the sword that drank their 
blood. 

The barbarians were religious. They cherished the Northern 
superstitions, and were not irresponsive to signs and assertions 
of the supernatural. Some of them had already been converted 
to the Arian form of Christianity. When, therefore, they were 
everywhere confronted by the Church, with its stately ceremonial, 
its compact hierarchy, its open door, its tender yet awful teach- 


*Bryce, “The Holy Roman Empire,” pp. 21, 22, "Rey. xiv, 8, 
22 


338 Christianity as Organized 


ings, its supernatural authority, the ancient story was retold of 
the victor yielding himself up to the moral power of his prostrate 
foe. Greece in letters, and despised little Judza in religion, had 
already subdued their Roman conquerors; and now Rome, Chris- 
tianized, is in her turn to triumph over the triumphant bar- 
barians. 


3. SHALL THE MEDIEVAL Papacy BE APPROVED? 


Here, as in connection with every great institution or move- 
ment of Christianity, is felt the pressure of the strictly Christian, 
as distinguished from the ecclesiastical, question: Is it in accord 
with the mind of Christ? Shall we say—quoting sundry think- 
ers who themselves are utter disbelievers in the grounds of the 
papal claim—that at least from Gregory the Great to Gregory 
the Seventh the papacy formed a part of God’s great scherne for 


the governing of the world; that it ‘‘was necessary for the train-— 


ing of the Romanic and Germanic nations of the Middle Ages, 


but has virtually outlived itself;’ that the providential function — 
of the Middle Ages was to “create an Imperial Church which ~ 
should bridle and tame the pioneer centuries of modernity ;” that — 


something like ‘“‘this was the course which the world, in its inner 
evolution, had to take?” 

It is of course not a question of the approval of the briberies, 
finesse, and frauds that have been practiced by the promoters of 


papal authority. These are confessedly evil—only evil in any 


form of Christianity, and especially so in that which claims to 
be not only preéminently holy but the one holy and only Church 
of Christ on earth. Nobody, for example, would now justify 
the Roman canonists’ gross interpolations, for the papacy’s sake, 
in Cyprian’s treatise “On the Unity of the Church;” nor the pub- 


lication of the shameless forgery of “The Donation of Constan- 


+ 


tine ;”’ nor the attributing of the Sardican canons to the Council 
of Nice; nor the use of the Pseudo-Isadorian Decretals, that most 
successful of all historic forgeries, which for six hundred years 
served so well the pope’s purpose to concentrate in himself all 


episcopal power. Together with the frauds, the numerous vices 


Bishop: The Papacy 339 


and crimes, the utter apostasy and shamelessness, in which the 
papacy has been implicated can expect nothing but condemna- 
tion.” Only let all the Christian churches, as well as all the 
Christians, remember the Master’s words and try to make their 
true application: “Judge not, that ye be not judged; “Beware 
of false prophets.” 

Nor is it a question of the acceptance or the rejection of the 
peculiar papal claims. For if these be true, and so the bishop of 
Rome indeed the vicegerent of Christ on earth, to whom all au- 
thority has been committed, in disobedience to whom is eternal 
condemnation, then this supremacy of Rome must be accepted 
as a part of God’s plan of governing the world not only in the 
Middle Ages but in all ages. And, on the other hand, if these 
claims have no foundation in truth, then this absolute Roman 
supremacy is contrary to the will and purpose of Christ, and 
outside the Divine plan. Only the true can claim as its author 
the God of truth. 

Nor yet again is it a question as to whether the papacy, sup- 
posed to be an evil thing in itself, or at best a colossal and tragic 
blunder, was overruled for the effecting of certain great and 
good results. For that which will not be divinely ruled may still 
be divinely overruled. That God should turn the intended curse 
of the Moabites against Israel into a blessing;* that he should 


+A scholarly Roman Catholic historical writer is constrained to say: 
“During that long period of a century and a half [882-1046] there is hardly 
one, perhaps not one Pope, who was even an ordinarily good bishop. It is a 
long story of simoniacal elections, murder, and violence of every kind, to- 
gether with shameless lust.” (Fortescue, “The Orthodox Eastern Church,” 


pp. 172, 173.) “Horrible people” is the author’s name for a long line of 


popes. 
“The papacy itself lost all independence and dignity, and became the prey 


_ of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was 
_ dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes, and would have per- 
ished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times. Pope 
_ followed pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in 
i deposition, prison, and murder.” (Schaff, “History of the Christian Church,” 


Vol. IV., p. 283.) Indeed, of this long period of utter depravity and crim- 


i inality, there can be no shadow of doubt, 


?Num. xxiii. 23, 24, 


340 Christianity as Orgamsed 


use the Assyrians, cruelest of nations, as a scourge for his elect 
people, and the sword of Cyrus as their deliverance; that the 
wicked conquests of Alexander should be made the occasion for 
the diffusion of the Greek language over the world as a prep- 
aration for Christian literature and preaching; that the unifica- 
tion of countries and nations under the Roman Empire should 
make possible the missionary labors and successes of the Apostles 
and others, by which the Church was founded among Jews and 
Gentiles; that Czesar’s bloody conquest of Gaul should have 
wrought eventually for the betterment of the land; that the Nor- 
man Conquest, with all its cruelty and oppression and all its evil 
consequences, should have served as an agency in English civili- 
zation; that American slavery should issue in the civilizing and 
Christianizing of millions of the world’s most benighted inhab- 
itants; that this or that American war, whether righteous or 
unrighteous, should have resulted well, in certain respects, for 
the world’s progress—that such things may be true, while the 
agents in all these movements, from the Assyrian to the Amer- 
ican, may have been actuated by the greed of gain or the lust 
of dominion, working an evil work and suffering the punishment 
that was meet ;—all this is a commonplace in the Christian view 
of history. And the Roman ecclesiastic rule might easily be sup- 
posed to be of a kind with these other historic facts. But neither 
does this touch the point now under consideration. 

Or, on the other hand, we might be asked to imagine what 
would have been the result if the medieval papacy had had its 
own way up to the present time. What would have been the 
condition of modern civilization and religion—of our modern 
world? The ignorance, the arrest of progress, the superstition, 
the poverty, the unhealthfulness, the political absolutism, the 
slavery of conscience, the abjectness of intellect must indeed 
have been appalling. But this, too, is irrelevant to our question. | 

The question is whether, not the papacy, either as it was or as 
it is, but a simple, strong, authoritative headship of the Church, 
was needed for the extension of the kingdom of God during the 


1Tsa. xliv. 28; xlv. 1-7. 


Bishop: The Papacy 341 


long and dark transitional period of European civilization. If 
it was needed, then we may well believe it to have been included 
in the Divine purpose. 

The laws of historic development have to be taken into con- 
sideration. Familiar enough is the proverb, the good is the ene- 
my of the best; but may not the best, on the other hand, be the 
enemy of the good—namely, through trying to force the ideally 
perfect upon people incapable of appreciating or using it? The 
ideally perfect life is for a man to direct and govern himself— 
to live, as his body does, from within. But so long as the man 
is a child it is best that he should be, to a very large extent, di- 
rected and governed from without. So with the childhood of 
an age. Incapable of democratic self-government, it may find 
its best in some form of strong monarchical control. Undoubt- 
edly “the best” is no less a comparative than a superlative idea.’ 

Let us, then, imagine the Roman bishop’s office stripped of 
every false belief or pretension, and exalted not simply to some 
such primacy in the Church of the West as the early centuries 
were disposed to sanction, but to a distinctly stronger authority: 
might it not reasonably and righteously have presented itself to 
the Middle Ages as their very best form of church government ?* 


“That form of church government is best which in any given age and 
society works best; and this may well be concentrated personal authority in 
one set of circumstances, and democratic representative administration in 
another. Each has its advantages and its disadvantages.” (Hyde, “From 
_ Epicurus to Christ,” p. 244.) 
| “To Western Christianity was absolutely necessary a center, standing 
: alone, strong in traditionary reverence, and in acknowledged claims to su- 

premacy. . . . Providence might have ordained otherwise, but it is im- 
_ possible for man to imagine by what other organizing or consolidating force 
the commonwealth of the Western nations could have grown up to a dis- 
cordant, indeed, and conflicting league, but still to a league, . . . to issue 
in the noblest, highest, most intellectual form of civilization known to man.” 
(Milman, “Latin Christianity,’ Bk. III., ch. vii. pp. 42, 43.) 

2“Regarded merely as the efflorescence of the episcopate, the ecclesiastical 
center of Western Christendom, it must be admitted that there is nothing 
in the idea of the papacy positively anti-Christian. If it be not anti-Chris- 
tian for the faithful of a diocese to gather themselves round a bishop, or 
for the bishops of a province to evolve out of their body a metropolitan cen- 
ter, no more was it anti-Christian for the episcopate of an empire, or of 


342 Christianity as Organised 


May I venture to suggest a modern illustration? The distin- 
guishing religious movement of England in the eighteenth cen-_ 
‘tury was the Evangelical Revival. Its leader, whose administra- 
tive gifts have rarely been equaled, enrolled his followers in soci- 
eties under his own personal control. For half a century, even 
unto the day of his death, when these societies numbered over a 
hundred and thirty thousand members, he governed them, save 
for a few years in America, with an unshared authority. To 
God alone would he hold himself responsible. Not that he had 
chosen to be intrusted with so great power. “It came upon me 
unawares,” so he solemnly declared. “I always did and do now 
bear it as my burden—the burden which God lays upon me— 
and therefore I dare not yet lay it down.” This Wesleyan au- — 
thority, some measure of which has been transmitted through - 
Episcopal Methodism to our own time, is now largely recognized 
as subversive of no Christian principle, and as grounded in vol- 
untary mutual self-renunciation for the sake of unity, edification, 
and aggressive force. And its works are its commendation. 

Now may not something like that which took place amid many 
limitations in a modern instance have taken place, a thousand 
years before, in the far wider field which opened westward for — 
the bishops of Rome? There was need of it. For the West of 
the Middle Ages there was apparent fitness in the centralization 
of administrative authority—fitness not only in centralizing and 
personalizing it, but in clothing it with extraordinary power. 
These medieval men were not able to think for themselves, in 
either politics or religion. They were not ready for self-govern- 
ment. They had neither the sense of personal responsibility nor 
the social conscience which are necessary to a true and safe de- 
mocracy. Let them be taught and quickened and built up into 
intellectual and moral manhood. But meantime they must sub- 
mit to a guiding and governing authority that might afterwards 
prove far more an intrusion and injustice than a necessity. 


the whole Church, to develop from itself a living center of unity, which 
should have the effect of consolidating and binding together the whole 
body.” (Litton, “The Church of Christ,” pp. 325, 326.) 


Bishop: The Papacy 343 


Was not, then, that turbulent time, enshrining nevertheless so 
splendid a promise, the opportunity for a united and progressive 
church under a single personal leadership? Let such a leader- 
ship be unspoiled by the debasement of authority into despotism, 
let it be enlightened and evangelic, yet firm, compact, powerful 
to subdue the awakening minds of men into reverence for divine 
ordinances and to embody in organic form the kingdom of heavy- 
en, let it be a pure type of Christianity organized—so runs the 
dream of what might have been." 

But it was not so. The men of that day being such as they 
were—only partly escaped from the immemorial superstitions 
of paganism and the overpowering idea of imperialism, accus- 
tomed to worship Rome in the person of the Emperor—the 
faith of the Son of Man was corrupted, authority overstrained, 
apostolic oversight perverted into hieratic and papal absolutism. 
Only the truth that remained shall we dare to call divine. 
The watch-care, the principle of authority and obedience, the co- 
operation, the organized aggressiveness, the external unity— 
these, it is not hard to believe, were of God’s ordering. And the 
great good that was done—in the arrest of barbarism, in the ad- 
ministration of justice, in saving distant churches like the Anglo- 
Saxon from lapsing into deepest ignorance and debasement, in 
the enforcement of an authority under whose protection nations 
might arise, in the inculcation of various Christian truths—it 
would be the very perverseness of folly to deny. Separated in 


: *Still it might not unreasonably be imagined that even in the Middle Ages 
a less centralized and personal form of government would, on the whole, 
have accomplished greater good—for example, that of the Cyprianic episco- 
_ pacy, or the conciliar system as illustrated in Presbyterianism. “If left to 
itself, the genius of Christianity might have evolved an organization which, 
starting from the unit of the congregational meeting, and rising through a 
series of synods with widening areas of jurisdiction, might have culminated 
in a really representative ecumenical council, or synod, which would have 
given a visible unity of organization to the whole Christian Church, and at 
the same time would have preserved its primitive democratic organization.” 
(Lindsay, “Church and Ministry,” p. 334.) 

One may even conceive of the successful operation of the original congre- 
_ gational church government from the beginning, under all circumstances, 
until now. (Cf. Heermance, “Democracy in the Church,” pp. 36 ff.) 


344 Christianity as Or ganized 


thought from the enormous evils by which it was embarrassed, 
the good stands forth as a witness to the purpose of God in the 
life of the ages out of which our own was born. 


4. Two ADDITIONAL STAGES OF PAPAL DEVELOPMENT. 


‘Recurring now to the story of the papacy, we shall have to 
mark two more stages of development. 

The first is well represented by the pontificate of Gregory VII. 
(1073-85), better known as Hildebrand, who asserted, as one 
of his official prerogatives, the power to govern the nations in 
the interest of the Church. The pope was overlord, kings and 
emperors his vassals. All kings must take or lay aside their 
crowns, and all peoples pay allegiance to their sovereigns, or 
refuse it, at his will. 

Was Hildebrand wholly wrong in this assertion? Assuming 
the papal idea to be true, he was wholly right. For, according to 
this idea, the Divine plan for the government of the world was 
that of a theocracy, with the bishop of Rome enthroned as the 
one universal and absolute ruler. The State, therefore, which 
was purely secular, must exercise no authority over the Church, 
but, on the contrary, must yield to the Church’s authority, which 
was that of the theocracy, the veritable kingdom of God. That 
bishops, for example, should be in any wise dependent on the 
State for their appointment to office was not to be tolerated 
(which was true enough). Did the Emperor or the King of 
England or any other civil ruler insist on having a determinative 
voice in episcopal appointments? He thereby lost his right to 
reign, and the pope must remove him from the throne and ap- 
point another in his place (which was by no means true). This, 
no doubt, is still the papal idea of the relation of Church and 
State, and Hildebrand was simply endeavoring, with an inflexi- 
ble purpose, to give it effective form. Christian kings wear their 
crowns only by the grace of the Holy Father, and must conduct 
their kingdoms as his dear and obedient sons. 

It was such a voice as had never been heard in the world be- 
fore. Imperial Rome gained the obedience of the nations, so 
far as she might be able to subjugate them with the sword, ruling 


cane 


Bishop: The Papacy 345 


by physical force; papal Rome commanded their obedience as a 
God-given ordinance, to disobey which was rebellion against the 


Most High. Was it but an idle boast? At any rate, it left the 


recalcitrant monarch well-nigh helpless. What could he do, with 
the churches of his kingdom closed, sacraments forbidden, the 
dead refused burial in consecrated ground, and his subjects freed 
from their oath of allegiance, by a supernatural Authority be- 
side which his own was little more than child’s play ?* 

The other stage of development concerns the question of doc- 


-trinal infallibility. Is the pope an infallible teacher? The Church 


has always been believed by Romanists—as it is now generally 
believed perhaps by High Anglicans’—to be infallible. But there 
must needs be some organ through which the absolutely true 
teaching is expressed. It were vain to speak of a general in- 
fallible authority in the Church without informing the inquirer 
when and where its articulate voice may be heard. What, then, is 
the infallible Church’s organ of expression? Perhaps the Gen- 
eral Council, perhaps the pope, perhaps the General Council and 
the pope acting conjointly—who can tell? There were three dif- 
ferent opinions, as just indicated, on the subject. 

But the opinion that for infallible teaching we must look to 
the pope—though quite contrary to the enactments of the Coun- 
cil of Constance (1414)° and of some lesser councils—showed 


*It may help toward realizing the situation to remember that “the great 
body of Christians in the West” in that day “feared the thunders of the 
Lateran as those of heaven; and were no more capable of sound discrimi- 
nation as to the limits, grounds, and nature of the authority than as to the 
causes of the destructive fire from the clouds. Their general belief in the 
judgment to come was not more deeply rooted than in the right of the 
clergy, more especially the head of the clergy, to anticipate, to declare, or to 
ratify their doom.” (Milman, “Latin Christianity,” Bk. VIL. ch. i., p. 363.) 

2Gore, “Roman Catholic Claims,” pp. 37, 38, 73, 74. 

*The significance of the Council of Constance lies in its assertion of 
the supreme authority of the General Council. Refusing to take the mind 
of Christ in the Scriptures as the ultimate rule of faith, unresponsive to the 


new life of thought and independent activity that was wakening in the world, 
deaf to the voices of the prophets whom God was raising up, this Council 


= ee gd 


sent John Hus, the brave and gentle Christian preacher, to the flames. But 
it also deposed John XXIII., the immoral pope. 


346 Christianity as Organized 


certain obvious advantages. For one thing, it seemed a long 
time to wait, from one General Council to another, in order to 
get an absolutely true definition in doctrine or morals." And was” 
not the pope at any rate superior to the Council? was not he, 
and no body of bishops, however venerable, the Rock upon which 
the Church was founded? And is it not fitting that the absolute 
ruler should also be the absolute teacher? Such considerations 
favored the attributing of this power to the see of Rome. 

As a matter of fact, the see of Rome had been exercising it 
already. For it was in 1854, for example, that Pius [X., with-— 
out convoking a council, set forth, on his own authority, the 
dogma of the Immaculate Conception—which had been rejected 
by such men as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the chief the- 
ologians of the fifth and the thirteenth century—and demanded, 
on pain of the Church’s anathema, that it be thenceforth univer- 
sally accepted. In the decreeing of this new article of faith, 
then, we may recognize an effective preparation for the enact- 
ment of the decree of papal infallibility, which was soon to be 
accomplished under the management and influence of this same 
energetic pontiff. 

True, the proposal that the Chair of Peter, apart altogether 
from the General Council or any other authority, should be de-— 
clared infallible, was strongly resisted by bishops, scholars, writ-— 
ers, and others.” In England and Ireland especially it seems to 


1Not, however, that frequent ex cathedra definitions in doctrine or morals 
for the whole Church are to be had even from an infallible pope. There 
has been none, I think, since the session of the Council which defined and 
declared his infallibility. “What is the advantage of a rapid-firing gun,” it 
has been asked, “if one never fires it?” 

To resist it now means excommunication. Yet how, in the light of his-— 
toric knowledge, can it be accepted? Let a Modernist tell: 

“Your Eminence: a boy in his teens, as ignorant as he was morally 
vicious, was once elected to be the Vicar of Christ. He had not at the 
moment of his election the most rudimentary knowledge of his catechism. © 
You maintain that the great Christian tradition and deposit of the faith 
was suddenly interfused into that empty, godless little brain; that he had 
only to look within himself in order to instruct the whole episcopate as to 
the true sense of revelation. Plainly your Church-theory is tenable only on 
the supposition of a continual miracle as wonderful as the conversion of 


Bishop: The Papacy 347 


have gained very little foothold. Still it persisted and gathered 
strength. It was the simplest and most logical outcome of the 
situation. Above all, the Curia willed it and worked for its real- 
ization. So when the time had grown ripe for defining the 
Roman faith on this question, Pope Pius convoked the Vatican 


_ Council, which, on the 18th of July, 1870, enacted the canon of 


papal infallibility. Not declaring the Roman Pontiff incapable 
of error in his personal opinions, it does declare him incapable 
of error in defining a doctrine concerning faith or morals for 
the whole Church. 

Thus the center of government was now asserted to be, and 
for all papists made to be, the center of teaching. Christian 
unity was completely defined. The centralizing idea which for 
long years had wrought with irregular but often renewed energy 
had now finished its task triumphantly. The General Council 
lay prostrate at the foot of the papal throne. The official word 
of one man became the universal law, from which there was ab- 
solutely no appeal. 

True enough, this one man’s infallibility consists, as it has 
been pertinently said, in “his inability to confess that either he 
or his predecessors erred even where their errors are most mani- 
fest.” But, nevertheless, it is now officially defined as historic, 
genuine, divine; and accordingly the Church as lawmaker, ad- 
ministrator, judge, and teacher, is the Pope. 


Shall we again be reminded that the papal dream of unity has 
failed of fulfillment? In the attempt to realize it the see of Rome 
repelled the Eastern Church till the ecclesiastical separation of 


4 East and West became irreparable. Later, in the Protestant 


Reformation, it hopelessly lost the strongest, most enlightened, 


_ and most progressive nations of the world. In some lands, in- 
_ deed, it crushed the rising dissent—and in torture-chambers so 


? water into wine, and which would give us a right to look for a uniform and 
' superhuman wisdom in the supreme government of the Church, for which 
_ there is not a vestige of historic evidence.” (Tyrrell, “Medievalism: A Reply 


i 


to Cardinal Mercier,” pp. 59, 60.) 


348 Christianity as Organized 


terrible that in comparison the Imperial persecutions of the early 
Christians were moderate and merciful. But in others the an- 
cient witness was repeated of men and women invincible in faith 
and courage, 


“Who wrapped the robe of flame around them, thanking God,” 


and multiplied the number of their fellow-believers. And where 
this Roman unity, enforced with both natural and supernatural 
terrors, seemed most successful, there the spiritual failure has of 
necessity shown the deepest. For its success was gained at the 
expense of Christian truth and the liberty of the sons of God. 

Again, what was the territorial extent of Rome’s ecclesiastic 
unity at the height of her power? It was the Southern and 
Western Europe of the Middle Ages—a plain and easily man- 
ageable field compared with the Christian world of the twen- 
tieth century." What was the intellectual condition of the people 
united under the absolutism of her government? They were 
potentially active-minded, but as yet of the night and of dark- 
ness—asleep in ignorance, the prey of gross intimidating super- 
stitions, without science, without historic knowledge or criticism, 
without initiative, without independence of thought. True, in 
that medieval time “the brain drank in the ecclesiastical belief 
as the lungs breathed the air;” but it was an unenlightened brain. 
It was destitute both of the science which was yet to be and— 
far worse deprivation—of the New Testament which had been 
hidden securely away. 

But alike through successes and failures, in the “ages of faith” 
and in the ages of enlightenment, the papal policy, much modified 
from time to time in administration, remains essentially the same. 
At all hazards unity of organization, under one monarchical 
head, has been maintained. This unlawful empire of the soul 
stands to-day a marvel of organic strength and completeness. 
While many thousands of those whom it counts in its member- 
ship are indifferent or unbelieving, other thousands are ready to 


1Fairbairn, “Catholicism, Roman and Anglican,” p. 279. 


Ne a 


Bishop: The Papacy 349 


go to the ends of the earth, braving every hardship and danger, 
in its service. Giant Pope, indeed, as Bunyan described him over 
two hundred years ago, may have “grown so crazy and stiff in 
his joints that he can do little more than sit in his cave’s mouth” 
in impotent anger—so far as his relations to heretical Christians 
are concerned. Yet within his own immense constituency he is 
still the recipient of great reverence and obedience. 

Meantime it remains, and doubtless it will remain when the 
heavens shall have passed away, that not without freedom can 
spiritual unity be achieved, and not without the knowledge of the 
truth can the prison walls of the soul be broken down. 


XV. 
UNITY: THE COUNCIE 


THE conciliar idea may lay claim to universality. People ac- — 
cept it as a matter of course, without ever inquiring whether 


men are what they are, imperfect in wisdom and inclined to open 

their minds to one another, it is inevitable that they should as- — 
semble, formally or informally, for discussion and conference. 
And so long as they have to live in divers trying social rela- 
tions—such, for instance, as that of government—it is inevitable 
that beliefs, usages, and laws should be proposed for considera- 
tion and action at their meetings. The same idea is illustrated 
whenever one man asks advice of another. It appears in num- 
berless everyday forms. Any two or three persons met together, 
though it be but casually on the street, talking over some matter 
of common interest, and trying to reach a unanimous decision, 
illustrate the essential principle of the Roman Senate, the Jewish 
Sanhedrin, the Council of Nice, the Second Hague Conference, 
or the International Court of Arbitration—a dewdrop showing — 
pictures of the sky. : 


j 
7 
: 
there was a time when it was strange or unknown. So long as | 
: 
} 
1 


“Where there is no counsel purposes are disappointed: : 
But in the multitude of counselors they are established.” 


Now in both Church and State the council, like the chief offi- 
cer of government—the bishop, or president, or monarch—stands 
committed to the principle of unity. However numerous or dis- — 
cordant the voices with which it speaks within its own doors, the © 
aim is to speak finally and out of doors with a single voice, so 
as to unify as well as to guide or govern the people in whose be- 
half it acts. Whether it be an advisory or an authoritative body, 
this is true. If advisory, it is intended that all shall follow its 
advice; if authoritative, that all shall keep its laws. Therefore, 
whatever other function it may perform, a council cannot be con- 


(350) 


Unity: The Council 351 


ceived otherwise than as a power that makes for order, peace, 
unity. 


I. COUNCILS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 


In the first days of Christian organization, when differences 
of sentiment and usage, or even dissensions, arose, threatening 
the peace of a congregation, there was one great and peculiar 
bond of unity available—namely, the determinative word of an 
Apostle. An instructive example is given in the First Epistle to 
the Corinthians. When the Christian believers in Corinth were 
divided on certain exciting points of morals and church order, 
they wrote to their inspired founder and teacher concerning these 
matters. The propriety of partaking, either at one’s own table 
or at a banquet to which one had been invited by a pagan friend, 
of meats that had been offered in sacrifice to idols, was such 
a question. And here we know how luminous and complete was 
the apostolic answer.’ 

But the occasions of disputings, sometimes petty and some- 
times full of significance, are innumerable in the Church—as in 
the home or the neighborhood or in any association. To deal 
with each separately and distinctly were impossible. Therefore, 
the Apostle, penetrating to the heart of the whole matter, would 
judge them all, from first to last, in the light of the newly re- 
vealed law of Christlike love. “If meat make my brother to 


. stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore.” “Is Christ divided? 


was Paul crucified for you?” “If there is any comfort in Christ, 
if any consolation of love, . . . fulfill ye my joy that ye 


be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, 


of one mind.” That was Paul’s universally applicable answer. 
The chief thing, then, is to recognize practically the center of 


ik mind, love, life in the ever-living Christ. Under the light of that 
vision of unity many a disorderly battle in the dark, with all its 
fateful effects, would be avoided. 


But there is also a notable instance in the New Testament of 


17 Cor, yiii. 


352 Christianity as Organized 


an effort to maintain the imperiled unity of a congregation by 
convoking a council. Even in this case, however, the Apostles 
were to be members of the body; and doubtless it was to them 
chiefly that the appeal for the peace-giving decision was made, 
Shall we recall the occasion? The newly-formed Jewish-Chris 

tian church in Antioch was unable to decide as to the conditions 
on which Gentiles should be received into its communion. It 
was no mere local moot point to be settled. It was a questio 

of vital and far-reaching significance. Whether the little churet 
in Antioch realized it or not, the future of Christianity depended 
largely upon the answer that might be given to such questions. 

The Church of the Old Testament, we must remember, was 
racial. It was composed of the children of Abraham, and of any 
others, never a great number, who might receive the sign of the 
covenant which God had made with the first Hebrew father 
Should the Church of the New Covenant likewise be racial, or 
was it the Divine will that it should be in the simplest and truest 
sense universal? Jewish particularism or evangelic universal 
ism? That was the question; and the Antiochian Christians felt 
their incompetence to settle it alone. They sent it, accordingly, 
by the mouth of Saul, Barnabas, and other messengers, to the 
Apostles and the elders of the church in Jerusalem, for determi 
nation. ; 

However, not only these but also the non-official members of 
the church seem to have attended the meeting and to have ap 
proved its action. For the messengers from Antioch were re 
ceived by “the church” as well as by “the Apostles and the 
elders ;’”’ and the messengers sent from Jerusalem, at the close of 
the conference, to convey its decision, were chosen by the Apos- 
tles and elders “with the whole church.’” 

This conference has sometimes been called, though with no 
commendable accuracy of language, the First General Council. 
It was not general at all, unless the word be here used in a 
peculiar sense. For it was not a council of different churches 


*Acts xv. 1-29, 


Unity: The Council 353 


meeting in the person of their representatives to consider mat- 
ters of common interest and importance, but the council of a 
single church, called at the request and on the behalf of another. 
And although it could claim the illumination of the Holy Spirit, 
yet the prohibitions that made up its decision—‘“that ye abstain 
from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things 
strangled, and from fornication’’—were not as a whole generally 
applicable. They were intended in their entirety to meet certain 
conditions only; for, as we know, one of them—that, namely, of 
abstention from things sacrificed to idols—was not by the apos- 
tle Paul laid upon the consciences of the Corinthian Christians.’ 

On the other hand, it may be asserted with perfect truth that 
this was no ordinary congregational council called to decide an 
economic question for a sister congregation. It was extraordi- 
nary, and has had no successor. Because side by side with the 
elders of this mother church in Jerusalem sat the Apostles off 
our Lord. This gave an inimitable, and in a certain sense an 
ecumenical, character to the body and its proceedings; for even 
though we should suppose that the Apostles took their seats in 
such an assembly as elders,’ we cannot believe that here or else- 
where they could lay aside their apostolic wisdom and mission. 
It must still have been the Apostles that sat as elders. Their 
voice must always be that of the chosen Twelve, taught and 
trained by the Son of Man, baptized with his Spirit of truth, and 
sent forth as his inspired teachers to all the world. 

Moreover, the decrees of this council of “the Apostles and 
elders which were at Jerusalem’? were of such general impor- 
tance and authority as to be delivered by Paul and Silas, on their 
missionary journey, to the churches in the cities of Asia Minor.° 

The fact of practical moment is that the council in Jerusalem, 
while not classifiable with any of the numberless subsequent 
church courts and conferences, is a worthy model for them all. 
Brotherliness, Christian expediency, fidelity to the truth, con- 
joined with a sensible and sympathetic consideration of the cir- 


1z Cor. viii. 1-8, aT Pet Valle conti nay auyolm ®Acts xvi. 4. 


23 


——_ - 


354 Christianity as Organized é 


cumstances to which they must be applied—such were its conspic- 
uous notes. And the effect of its action in the city of Antioch 


was joy and upbuilding, in the place of a threatening spirit of © 


dissension and schism. 


As might have been expected, we also find various references 
in the New Testament to the local council, or business meeting 
of the congregation. Such a meeting is referred to in the words 
of our Lord, when he says, “Tell it to the church;” in the story 
of the election of Matthias to the apostleship in the Upper 
Room ;’ and even in such a proposal as that of Paul to the Corin- 
thians with respect to the conveyance of their contributions to 
the needy Christians in Jerusalem—“whomsoever ye shall ap- 
prove by letters, them will I send.’ Ina word, wherever a board 
of elders might sit in consultation, or a meeting of all the breth- 
ren be held for deliberation on any matter, there was the con- 
ciliar principle in practical Christian expression. 


2. EARLY INTER-CONGREGATIONAL COUNCILS. 


A good many years elapsed, however, before different congre- 
gations began to unite in a single deliberative assembly composed 
of representatives of each, and thus to form an inter-congrega- 
tional council. At first a council of this kind included very few 
congregations, and seems to have been marked by no very formal 
method of procedure. Afterwards it represented a wider, territo- 
ry, and was somewhat more numerously attended. Then, ere 
long, appeared the provincial, and a century later the General, or 
Ecumenical, Council. And it is this course of organific develop- 
ment—the gradual lengthening of the conciliar bond of Chris- 
tian unity—that we have now for a little while to follow. 

Leaving out of view, then, the council in Jerusalem, as an ex. 
traordinary assembly, 

(1) There is, as just said, the local, or congregational, council. 

(2) Then, passing on from the New Testament age, we meet 
with the case of a congregation, in some emergency or time of 


*Acts i, 15-26, = E, GOrsa VIS 


Unity: The Council 355 


special need, asking that delegates from sister congregations 
come to its help with advice or other service. 

Such a case may be illustrated by the Occasional Councils of 
the Congregational churches of our own day. Here, when a 
church desires the ordination or the installation of a minister, or 
feels its need of advice concerning such a matter as internal dis- 
lsensions or as accusation made against its pastor, it requests pas- 
tors and delegates from certain neighboring churches to assist it 
by ordaining or installing the chosen minister, or by conferring 
with it on the matter under consideration and giving suitable 
counsel.” 

Of this simplest form of the intercongregational council, some 
indications may be seen in the second century. By the middle 
of this century it was in some localities the rule, as we have al- 
ready learned in another connection, that in case of a vacancy in 

the pastorate of a church consisting of fewer than twelve fami- 
lies, the church should call for three representatives of sister 
congregations to unite with it in a congregational meeting for 
the election of a pastor.* Indeed, in the third century it became 
a custom that all congregations, the strong as well as the feeble, 
should adopt a similar course; and in the first quarter of the 
fourth century it appears not simply as a custom but as a uni- 
versal law. For what else was the canon of the Council of Nice 
respecting the ordination of bishops ?* 

Of like character probably—one congregation calling another 
to its assistance—were some of the earlier councils for the 
suppression of Montanism. Some of these, in fact, seem to have 
been simply incidental meetings between one congregation and 
certain members of another. At least an instance is recorded of 
a presbyter who, together with a fellow-presbyter, being in An- 
cyra, a chief city of Galatia, and finding the Christians there 


+See p. 384. ?Sources of Apostolic Canons (E. T.), p. 8. 

*“Tt is by all means proper that a bishop should be appointed by all the 
bishops in the province; but should this be difficult, either on account of 
urgent necessity or because of distance, three at least should meet together 
and the suffrages of the absent [bishops] also being given and communicated 
in writing, then the ordination shall take place.” (Can. iv.) 


356 Christianity as Organized 


much agitated over this “novelty” of Montanism, discussed the 
question before them many days, so that “the church rejoiced 
and was strengthened in the truth; and the two presbyters were 
requested by “the presbyters of the place’ to write a record of 
what had been said and to leave it with the church.” What then 
have we here? A Christian congregation, two presbyters from 
another congregation “happening” to be with them, discussions 
day after day on vital points of doctrine and discipline, a record 
of the visiting presbyters’ teachings and injunctions requested— 
here, in its crudest germinal form, was an inter-congregational 
conference, synod, council. 

(3) Next we notice the gathering of representatives from a 
region of country, larger or smaller in extent—such, in some in- 
stances, as might afterwards constitute the territory of a whole 
patriarchate—to deliberate upon some perplexing question of 
general concernment. Here appear the more prominent councils 
that were convened in the latter part of the second century with 
reference, as in the case of those held earlier and less frequently, 
to the spread of Montanism. And, in truth, they were apparently 
much needed. It was under stress of no little excitement and 
danger that they met.” 

To protect the Church, then, against the multiplying excesses 
of Montanism, these Christian synods were called together.* 
As to the character of their members, or the particular cities in 
which they were held, no record remains. In all probability they 
were neither formally constituted nor numerously attended. 

There was another question that seriously disturbed the peace 
of the early Church, which occasioned the calling of similar 
though much larger councils. It was a question of ritual ob- 
servance: Shall the Christian Passover (or Easter festival, as 
it was infelicitously named by our English forefathers) be cele- 


1Eusebius, H. E., V. xvi. 4. *See pp. 547, 548. 

’“For the faithful in Asia met often in many places throughout Asia to 
consider this matter, and examined the novel utterances and pronounced 
them profane, and rejected the heresy; and thus these persons were expelled 
from the Church and debarred from the communion.” (Eusebius, H. E,, 
V. xvi. 10.) 


Unity: The Council 357 


brated on the day of the Jewish Passover, the fourteenth of 
the month Nisan, no matter on what day of the week this date 
may fall? or shall the death of Jesus always be celebrated on a 
Friday, the day of the week on which it occurred, and his resur- 
rection on the following Sunday? 

In the churches of Asia it was customary to observe the day 
of the Jewish Passover. On the fourteenth of Nisan, according- 
ly, they kept a fast, and in the evening partook of a love feast 
and the Lord’s Supper in commemoration of the redemptive Sac- 
rifice. That was their Christian Passover. In this custom the 
emphasis was placed upon the sacrificial death of Christ. But 
outside Asia Minor the churches had chosen to celebrate the 
death of Christ on a Friday, with a fast that was kept till the 
following Sunday, when it was followed by the festal rejoicing 
appropriate to the day of the Resurrection. Here the emphasis 
was placed not upon the crucifixion, but upon the fact that the 
Crucified One had risen triumphantly from the dead.* 

It was not a vital question. Irenzeus, the peacemaker, was 
right in his appeal to the contending parties: ‘“Whence these 
schisms? We keep the feasts, but in the leaven of malice by tear- 
ing the Church of God, and observing what is outward in order 
to reject what is better, faith and charity.”’ Nevertheless the 
proper ritual observance of the supreme facts of the Christian 
revelation was involved in the controversy; and through the dif- 
ference of practice that prevailed among the churches, one Chris- 
tian community might be fasting and lamenting at the Cross 
while another was singing hymns of triumphant joy over the 
Saviour’s conquest of death. It did not seem fitting that such 
contrary scenes should be permitted to occur in the Catholic 
Church. 

But how might the disorder be rectified? The whole Chris- 
tian world was agitated by the controversy ; and for its settlement 
there were held, in Palestine, Ephesus, Gaul, Rome, Corinth, and 


“The gist of the paschal controversy was whether the Jewish paschal day 
(be it a Friday or not), or the Christian Sunday, should control the idea 
and time of the entire festival.” (Schaff, “Church History,” Vol. II., 212.) 


358 Christianity as Organized 


other places, councils of the churches'—though with no great 
success. 

In Greece, early in the third century, similar councils were 
held with frequency if not with regularity.” 

(4) More regularly held but relatively narrow, of course, in 
their range of representation and influence, were the diocesan 
councils. These were convened by the ordinary bishop, for con- 
sultation with the clergy of his episcopal district, or diocese. 

(5) What of the provincial councils? These came naturally 
and reasonably, together with the office of provincial, or metro- 
politan, bishop. 

In the third century the ecclesiastical leader most prominent 
in the convening of such synods was Cyprian of Carthage; and a 
prominent subject of discussion was that of rebaptism: Shall a 
person who was baptized by a heretic, though according to the 
regular Trinitarian formula, and is now seeking admission into 
the Catholic Church, be received without rebaptism? On the 
affirmative side of the question stood Rome; on the negative side, 
Carthage. And the finally prevalent party was Rome. 


3. THESE PROVINCIAL CoUNCILS WERE REPRESENTATIVE BODIES. 


Let it be noted that during the first century and a half of their 
history the post-apostolic councils seem to have been composed 
chiefly of bishops. But together with the bishops there sat, cer- 
tainly in some cases, presbyters, deacons, and chosen laymen.* 


1Hefele, “History of the Christian Councils,’ Bk. I., sec. 2. 

2“Besides, throughout the provinces of Greece, there are held in definite 
localities those councils gathered out of the universal churches, by whose 
means not only all the deeper questions are handled for the common benefit, 
but the actual representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with 
great veneration.” (Tertullian, “On Fasting,” 13.) 

“Pastors [bishops] of the churches from all directions made haste to 
assemble at Antioch, as against a despoiler of the flock of Christ. Of these 
the most eminent were Firmilianus, bishop of Czsarea in Cappadocia, the 
brothers Gregory. . . . If any should count them up, he could not fail 
to note a great many others, besides presbyters and deacons, who were at 
that time assembled for the same cause in the above-mentioned city.” (Euse- 
bius, H. E., VII., xxvii., xxviii.) 

“The Acts [of the Council of Elvira, much more than an ordinary pro- 


i i 


Unity: The Council 359 


Besides, their sessions were held apparently in the presence of 
any church members who might choose to attend. They were 
representative bodies, not yet withdrawn in hierarchic separa- 
tion from the people, but speaking the mind of the Church and 
acting in its name. 

As to influence, they were doubtless powerful. As to author- 
ity, strictly speaking, they exercised none. Their decisions, 
though often carrying, as may be supposed, a determinative moral 
weight, were not mandatory but advisory only. No coercive 
measures were employed to secure obedience.* In fact, according 
to the Cyprianic doctrine, it could not be done; inasmuch as every 
bishop, even the least competent local pastor, with the smallest con- 
gregation of them all, was free from ecclesiastical authority (as 
free, for example, as a modern Congregational or Baptist church) 
and answerable only to the Chief Shepherd and Bishop of souls. 

As a matter of fact, in the absence of any formal enactment 
of interchurch law during these early centuries, the churches 
were governed to a large extent by the unwritten law of Custom. 

Let us think of this for a moment. Already in the Apostolic 
Epistles we find references to the custom of the churches gener- 
ally as an influential consideration in determining the practice 
of any particular church: “But if any man seemeth to be con- 
tentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.’”* 
So in the post-apostolic age. Accordingly the question before 
the councils was: What have the Christian congregations gener- 
ally believed? what rites of worship have they observed? what 


vincial council and held as late as the year 305] also mention twenty-four 
priests, and say that they were seated at the Synod like the bishops, while 
the deacons and laity stood up.” (Hefele, “History of the Christian Coun- 
ess Bk tp. 132.) 

*“The result of the deliberations of such a conference was expressed some- 
times in a resolution, sometimes in a letter addressed to other churches. It 
was the rule for such letters to be received with respect; for the sense of 
brotherhood was strong and the causes of alienation were few. But so far 
from such letters having any binding force on other churches, not even the 
resolutions of a conference were binding on a dissentient minority of its mem- 
bers.” (Hatch, “Organization of Early Christian Churches,” pp. 170, 171.) 

?1 Cor. xi. 16. 


360 Christianity as Organized 


forms of discipline have they followed? ‘That is the point on 
which judgment was to be pronounced. How has it been hereto- 
fore? rather than, How shall we make it to be?’ 

A good illustration may be seen in the history of the New Tes- 
tament Canon. Who selected the twenty-seven writings that 
should thenceforth be accepted in the Church as given by divine 
inspiration so as to constitute the Scriptures of the New Cove- 
nant, and when was it done? The churches did it—the people, 
the Christian communities, together with and under the guidance 
of their pastors, theologians, and teachers; and it was accom- 
plished through the slow course of three centuries. Or, if one 
be pleased so to express it, the New Testament “canonized itself.” 
True, certain provincial councils—though never a General Coun- 
cil—took action on the question. The most notable of these met 
in the city of Carthage in the year 397. But it was not in the mind 
of this Council of Carthage to declare that, having thoroughly 
examined the claims of the various Christian writings, or having 
received some special illumination from on high, it had decided, 
as a matter of its own judgment, that the twenty-seven books 
which it had chosen out, and these only, were to be taken as New 
Testament Scripture. The Council only enumerated in its canon 
the books which the Church had already fixed upon practically as 
divinely inspired and authoritative. It registered the gradually 
formed selective Christian judgment.” 

So, then, acquiescence in that unwritten law which in all ages 
has played so powerful a part in the regulation of human con- 
duct, and which we need but open our eyes to observe in its in- 
fluence upon standards of living, social forms, modes of speech, 
religious beliefs and observances, in communities and organized 
societies of the present day—acquiescence in the decisions of this 


1Even Pope Leo XIII. is reported to have said concerning the dogma of 
papal infadlibility: “The truth is not in me but in the Church.” Which seems 
to mean that it was only what was believed and taught generally in the 
Roman Catholic Church, as set forth by her representative scholars, theo- 
logians, and others, that he would ever declare ex cathedra to be true in doc- 
trine or morals. 

?Moore, “The New Testament in the Christian Church,” pp.. 26, 159-163. 


: 
| 


Unity: The Council 361 


same pervasive spirit of Custom was the nearest approach that 
had yet been made to general ecclesiastic legislation. 

Thus the external unifying of the Church went on. Bishops’ 
councils and the contagion of custom were giving form to that 
inner unity of the spirit which the Christian people must needs 
have in Christ the Lord. Thus the Church, with all its faults, 
became consciously catholic, more and more catholic; a great 
spiritual commonwealth; an ecclesiastical republic; its stronger 
communities helping to bear the infirmities of the wavering and 
the weak; strengthening itself against divisive forces in faith 
and polity ; commanding the respect of the Empire under whose 
government, often as yet antagonistic, it had arisen and was liv- 
ing its aggressive life. 

But it was not an intercongregational organization. Some- 
what less than even a federation, it was an informal but vital and 
effective catholic alliance of the churches; and it has had no 
worthy successor thus far in Christian history. 


4. THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 


(6) Whether, in case of Christianity’s keeping aloof from all 
alliance with the State, a strictly ecumenical and authoritative 
council of the Christian Churches would ever have been held, is 
but a speculative question. It is certain, however, that any 
process of development that may have begun in this direction 
was quickly completed by the Imperial “commandment and will.” 
The first Christian emperor did it. In A.D. 325 was convoked 
his Council of Nice. 

Not unreasonably may it be supposed that Constantine’s main 
motive in calling together this august synod was the unity of the 
Roman Empire. For he was more politician than Christian.” 

Manifestly in the administration of any national government 


*“With the ardent desire for enforcing unanimity on those whom he was 
now called to govern, he combined a vague but profound reverence for the 
character and powers of the heads of the Christian community. From the 
union of these two feelings sprang (as he himself tells us, ‘by a divine in- 
spiration’) the first idea of convening a Council of the representatives of the 
whole Church.” (Stanley, “Hist. of the Eastern Church,” p. 177.) 


362 Christianity as Organized 


the national unity must be a prime object. Hence the sovereign’s 
patronage of an established religion, his deprecation of sects, his 
high-handed persecution of dissent with dungeon, sword, and 
flame. It is not to be assumed—whether he be a Louis XIV., a 
Henry VIII., or a Peter the Great—that personally he cares more 
for one form of religious faith than for another. He may or 
may not; but in either case his ultimate aim is probably not the 
interests of any particular religion, but the strength and perpe- 
tuity of the State, and especially, it may be, of his own royal 
house. It is his will that the Church, through uniformity of 
creed and usage, should help to consolidate the nation, and not, 
through parties and schisms and variant polities, tend to loosen 
the bonds of national unity and peace. 

Now of this purpose to exploit the religious faith and prac- 
tices of the people in the interest of national solidarity, the Roman 
Empire offers one among many instructive examples. True, the 
various tribal cults were not prohibited. There were excellent 
political reasons why they should be tolerated. But, moreover, 
there was a religion that Rome did attempt to make universal: 
she attempted to universalize the “worship of the divine majesty 
of Rome” in the person of the Emperor. In all the provinces, 
even unto the remotest districts, all men must bow down at this 
shrine and adore this god. Thus would the sinews of the na- 
tional life be everywhere strengthened.” 

But meantime Christianity had appeared on the scene, and now 
for a long time had been contending with paganism in all its 
forms for mastery in the Empire. One or the other the Imperial 
government might naturally enough feel committed to protect, 
favor, and render universally prevalent. Which, then, should it 
be? Constantine chose Christianity—as some one has said, half 
convinced of its truth and wholly convinced of its political ex- 
pediency—and was seeking to make it the sole religion of the 
Roman people. 

Yet the Emperor, doubtless to his sore disappointment, found 
Christianity itself torn into bitterly contending parties. Just at 


*Ramsay, “St. Paul the Traveler,” pp. 134, 135. 


—————E— 


ee 


a a 


Unity: The Council 363 


this time it was divided on a vital question of Christian doctrine. 
Trinitarianism and Arianism were each claiming to be the true 
and original faith of the Church. To the mind of the Emperor, 
as civil ruler (whatever may have been his personal religious 
feeling or conviction), such a state of things was intolerable. 
There must be unity of creed; and it was to secure this result that 
he summoned the bishops of the Church to meet in the first Gen- 
eral Council.” 

It was bishops only that he summoned. As many as three 
hundred and eighteen of them assembled. All, with probably 
eight exceptions, were from the East, the seat of theological 
learning and activity. By no means perfect either in mind or in 
character, borne away in many instances by a spirit of violent 
partisanship, and thus far unfit for the vision of spiritual truth, 
they may nevertheless be taken perhaps as representing what was 
highest and best in the Church of that age. They wrangled no 
little; but they also showed signs of wisdom and charity, and, we 
may believe, of providential guidance and enlightenment. Some 
of them were confessors; some were martyrs, bearing on their 
bodies the marks of cruel persecutions which they had suffered 
for Christ’s sake—“‘living witnesses of martyrdom in which they 
had shared the torment, though not the palm.” 

The great Emperor, seated on a richly gilt throne, opened the 
council with an exhortation to concord and unity: “Do not delay, 
ministers of God and good servants of our common Lord and 
Saviour, to remove all grounds of difference and to wind up by 
laws of peace every link of controversy.”” “For to me,” he as- 
sured them, “‘far worse than any war or battle is the civil war of 


*Intermediate between the provincial and the ecumenical council was such 
a synod as that of Arles, in the South of Gaul. It was convened by the 
Emperor Constantine, in the year 314, and with special reference to a case 
in connection with the Donatist schism. Having met, however, it also decided 
questions of more general interest, such as the rebaptism of heretics, the 
observance of Easter, and the ordination of bishops. “We may look on the 
assembly at Arles as a general council of the West (or of the Roman patri- 
archate). It cannot, however, pass for an ecumenical council, for the reason 
that the other patriarchs did not take any part in it, and indeed were not 
invited to it.” (Hefele, “History of the Christian Councils,’ Bk. I., sec. 15.) 


364 Christianity as Organized 


the Church of God.” A number of bishops had put into his 
hands letters filled with accusations against their fellow-bishops. 
He burned the letters, unread, as an object lesson, in the pres- 
ence of the whole assembly. A man of war preaching peace to 
the unfaithful sons of peace—the humiliating scene has been 
more than once repeated since that day. Nor has an end yet come 
to “the civil war of the Church of God.” 

The deliberations of the council resulted in a definition of the 
faith of the Church as to the nature of our Lord. And the Em- 
peror pronounced the decree that those who refused to sign the 
orthodox creed should be banished, that the books of Arius 
should be burned, and that the penalty of reading them should 
be death. For such, alas! was a part of the method of this man 
of war and preacher of peace for putting an end to the existing 
civil war of the Church of God. Let us gladly recall that it was 
no part of the method of the man whose name stands more nota- 
ble than any other as representative of the doctrinal definition of 
the Council; for “it is proof,” said the great Athanasius, “that 
men have no confidence in their own faith when they use force 
and compel unwilling men to think as they do.” 

In addition to this fundamental question in doctrine, another 
cause of widespread division was dealt with at Nice. This was 
the Easter controversy, which, after having persisted more than 
a hundred years, had not yet been laid to rest—certain churches 
still celebrating the Christian redemption on one day and the rest 
on another. But now ‘the great and holy Synod” spoke with 
the voice of authority, and enacted the rule that the Sunday im- 
mediately following the full moon on or next after the vernal 
equinox should be observed as the Christian paschal day. And 
it is this rule that has given direction to the “Easter” customs of 
Christendom from that time to the present. 

There was also a canon—namely, the Fifth—that might be 
specially noted as illustrative of the legislative efforts which were 
making for the unification of the churches. It read thus: “Con- 
cerning those, whether of the clergy or of the laity, who have 
been excommunicated in the several provinces, let the provision 


Unity: The Council 365 


of the canon be observed by the bishop which provides that per- 
sons cast out by some be not readmitted by others. Nevertheless 
inquiry should be made whether they have been excommunicated 
by captiousness or contentiousness, or any such like ungracious 
disposition in the bishop.” And then follows a provision for 
the holding of two semiannual sessions of the provincial council, 
one in the spring and the other in the fall, for the consideration 
of such cases. 

How had it been in the earlier time? A church member, 
whether minister or layman, might be expelled from a particular 
congregation, and received into the fellowship of some other 
congregation.. Thus the idea of the separateness and independ- 
ence of the churches, rather than that of their oneness and inter- 
dependence, was encouraged. But there was an increasing sense 
of unfitness in this state of things, which sentiment crystallized 
into this prohibitory canon. Expulsion from any local church 
must be regarded as expulsion from the universal Church. Not 
separateness but oneness, not independence but interdependence, 
was emphasized. 

And if complaint should be made that this law might work 
injustice to the excommunicated person, the reply would be that 
the very contrary was true. Because such a person could now 
have his case reviewed by a more competent tribunal, free from 
local disturbing influences and prejudices—even by a provincial 
council. To belong to the meanest village in the Roman Empire 
was to belong to the Empire: similarly to belong to the feeblest 
congregation in the Christian Church was to belong to the Church. 
It was a privilege and an honor; and it was the law. Let the 
idea of the local brotherhood be more perfectly fulfilled in the 
idea of the universal brotherhood—to be or not to be a member 


1“Tf he had been expelled for a moral offense, no doubt the causes which 
led to his expulsion by one community would prevent his reception by an- 
other. But where the ground of expulsion had been the holding of peculiar 
opinions, or the breach of a local by-law, it might be possible to find some 
other community which would ignore the one or condone the other,” (Hatch, 
“Organization of Early Christian Churches,” p. 176.) 


366 Christianity as Organized 


of a church is to be or not to be a member of the Church. Such 
seems to have been the spirit of the law. 


5. ECUMENICAL COUNCILS SUBSEQUENT TO THE First. 


After this first of the General Councils, six others, acknowl- 
edged as such by both the Roman and the Eastern Church, were 
held: at Constantinople (381), at Ephesus (431), at Chalcedon 
(451), two later ones at Constantinople, and the last, like the 
first, at Nice (787). These all, it will be noticed, were held in 
the East. Not only so, but in none of them was the West pro- 
portionately, or in any full and proper sense, represented. At 
First Nice, as we have seen, there were only eight Western rep- 
resentatives; at Chalcedon, with its five or six hundred members, 
there were only five; and at First Constantinople, none at all. 

Now we have also to bear in mind that these Seven were all 
episcopal councils, made up of bishops only. Presbyters or dea- 
cons might attend, take part in the proceedings, and exert what 
influence they could; but except in case of their being representa- 
tives of bishops, they were not permitted to vote. As to the 
laity, they were present neither in person nor by representatives 
—save as they were represented by that most powerful of all lay- 
men, the Emperor himself. True, they still had a vote at home, 
for many years, in the election of their bishops; but the bishops 
when in council did not act in the name of the laity, but “in their 
own names as successors of the Apostles.” The supreme or- 
ganization of Christianity had become purely prelatic. 

Were the Seven Councils, then, real or only so-called ecumen- 
ical bodies? So-called rather than real. The real ecumenical 
council would represent not merely the one order of bishops, and 
these chiefly in one large field of the ecclesiastic territory. It 
would express, as far as any possible assembly could, the mind 
of the whole Church, the millions of laymen as well as the thou- 
sands of ministers, the collective conscience, experience, and judg- 
ment of all the congregations of Christ throughout the world. 

Such a representative Council of organized Christianity—when 
and where shall its meeting be? Will the civil governments have 


Unity: The Council 367 


to lead the way with International Arbitration in some Parlia- 
ment of the Nations, and the federation of the Churches wait 
upon the federation of the States? Are ever-multiplying discov- 
eries and inventions and intellectual enlightenment to be used of 
God to hasten its coming? Far away in the silent future, is it 
not? We may indeed think so, as men count the years. But not 
too far for faith and hope which are in the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ ; and it may be nearer than we think. 

However this may be, we are assured that the Church is not 
heading nowhither. It shall come into its kingdom of visible 
unity, universality, and power, though we know not when or 
how or “with what body” it will come. And then shall the world 
also believe in the divine Apostleship of Jesus—even as he prayed 
under the solemn shadow of the cross that it should be. 


6. DEPENDENCE OF THESE COUNCILS ON THE EMPEROR. 

A word of emphasis on a fact alluded to a moment ago with 
respect to the supreme organization of Christianity. When this 
organization is described as purely prelatic, there is a certain 
grand exception that ought, for the whole truth’s sake, to be 
made. Higher in ecclesiastic power than even the bishop of 
Rome was a succession of laymen—the Roman emperors. The 
ecumenical councils were all convoked by imperial authority and 
presided over, except in two cases, by the emperor in the person of 
his commissioners (he himself being sometimes present )—though 
patriarchs, and their representatives, and especially the legates of 
the bishop of Rome, also took part in the presidency. Their de- 
crees were signed by the emperor. And their expenses were paid 
not by the Church but out of the public treasury.” For the Em- 
pire not only included territorially the Christian world, but also 
combined a munificent patronage with the exercise of a large au- 
thority, in its relation to the Church. The idea still survives in 
the Church of England, which officially declares that ‘General 
Councils may not be gathered together without the command- 
ment and will of Princes.” 


4Schaff, Church History, Vol. III., pp. 335-337. Articles of Religion, xxi. 


368 Christianity as Organized 


Verily it is not thus that we should have been glad, in tracing 
the course of the organizing of Christianity, to see the Church 
of the New Covenant maintain its unity and fulfill its mission. 
Why should our Lord have permitted his kingdom in its outward 
and organized form, allying itself with the magistrate’s scepter 
and availing itself of his sword, to become so largely a kingdom 
of this world? We cannot tell, except so far as we have learned 
to “see in a mirror darkly.” 

Neither can we tell why grave doctrinal errors should be per- 
mitted to creep into the Church and climb to places of age-long 
power. Nor can we tell why the earth itself, on which the whole 
vast result of human life is to be achieved, should have such 
wide frozen zones, and so many arid miles of gravel and sand, 
and such persistently recurring earthquakes, and the ever-present 
terror of our million million microscopic enemies in water and 
air. Such problems in their entirety—who would dream of soly- 
ing them? Let them await their time. 

But we may know that, with this same earth and this same 
Church, God is working out his great redeeming purpose through 
the ages. We may know that men, who are not mechanical prod- 
ucts but free beings, whose highest perfection is perfection of 
character, must be divinely dealt with as such. We may know 
beyond a doubt that precious and wide-reaching are the uses of 
struggle and suffering, of search for truth, of difficult decisions, 
of conflict with evil—‘‘the moral uses of dark things.”’ Alike in 
the light of science, of personal experience, and of the New 
Testament, we may learn that both for individuals and for socie- 
ties the condition of progress is labor, self-denial, overcoming. 

Surely, then, it is believable that the manifold wisdom of God 
may be illustrated in the maintenance of his living truth and the 
perpetuation of his faithful witnesses, amid unceasing conflict 
with error within as well as without, rather than in miraculously 
defending his Church, from first to last, against all secularization 
and strife. 

Meantime, whatever the darkness, the life-giving light is ever 
falling from the cross of Christ, the fatherhood of God. the 
heaven of sacrificial love. 


Unity: The Council 369 


And the Church—it is not the organization or ecclesiasticism 
that men call by its name. It is the confessing Congregation 
against which the gates of death shall not prevail. 


With the Second Council of Nice the succession of Councils, 
that with any degree of appropriateness may be named ecumen- 
ical, came to a close. The Roman councils that are so named— 
such, for example, as the five Lateran Councils, that ef Con- 
stance, that of Trent, and that of the Vatican—are entitled to 
this designation only on the hypothesis that the Church of Rome 
is itself the Church Universal; for neither Eastern nor Evangel- 
ical Christianity had any representation in them. 


7. DocTRINAL AUTHORITY OF ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 


What author#ty was ascribed to the doctrinal deliverances of 
a General Council? The next highest to Holy Scripture, which 
was accepted as formally and absolutely infallible. 

But in the Church of Rome the doctrinal infallibility of the 
General Councils, their decisions being sanctioned by the pope, is 
distinctly taught.” 

In Protestantism all doctrinal deliverances of councils are to 
be judged by the teachings of Scripture. Neither theoretically 
nor practically are they held infallible. The appeal of Luther was 
first from the pope ill informed to the pope well informed; then 
from the pope to the Ecumenical Council; then from the Ecu- 
menical Council to the scriptures: “Unless therefore I am con- 
vinced by the testimony of Scripture, or by clear reasoning, un- 


*Leo the Great is quoted by the papal historians as saying that the decrees 
of Chalcedon were made under the instruction (instruente) of the Holy Spirit, 
Gregory the Great as professing his veneration of “the four first Councils 
equally with the four Gospels,” and a number of the Fathers as sharing such 
sentiments. (See Hefele, “Hist. of the Christian Councils,’ Introd., sec. 8.) 
But these glowing utterances are not conclusive of the general mind of the 
early Church on this subject. “They were not held to be formally infallible, 
but to possess an authority proportioned to their universality, to be capable 
of being amended by subsequent councils upon better information, and to 
be subordinate to Scripture.” (€Smith and Cheetham’s Dict. of Antiquities, 
Art. “Council,” C.) 


24 


370 Christianity as Organized 


less I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted, and 
unless my conscience is thus bound by the Word of God, I cannot 
and will not retract.”” Holy Scripture the final authority, private 
judgment an inalienable right. Here is the historic standing- 
ground of Protestant Christianity." 

Were it possible to-day for some truly ecumenical synod to be 
gathered together at some designated time and place, represent- 
ing the Christianity of the whole world, its doctrinal decisions, 
like those of any local or denominational assembly, must be 
judged by the Holy Scriptures under the light of the Spirit of 
truth, and might be amended by some subsequent similar as- 
sembly. 

But the evangelic communions make far larger use of the con- 
ciliar idea, recognizing its true place and value, than do the hier- 
archic bodies. Autocratic authority and the assumptions of in- 
errancy are excluded. The meeting face to face of the wisest 
and best ; interchange of views; united prayer for divine wisdom; 
the promised presence of Him who now as heretofore is ever 
building and defending his Congregation—these are the princi- 
ples of evangelic deliberative assemblies. And such assemblies 
are constituted in all grades, from a stewards’ meeting, or a meet- 
ing for the election of a ruling elder, all the way up to a Meth- 
odist Ecumenical Conference, a Pan-Presbyterian Council, a 
Free Church Council, or an Evangelical Alliance. In many cases 
they are authorized to give counsel only ; in many others, to enact 
laws and issue commands. They represent, in various degrees 
of universality, the Church in its multiform departments and un- 
dertakings. They direct its movements ; they utilize its resources ; 
they protect its unity. 


“And when they [General Councils] be gathered together (forasmuch as 
they be an assembly of men whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and 
Word of God) they may err, and sometimes have erred even in things per- 
taining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to sal- 
vation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that 
they are taken out of Holy Scripture.” (Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. XXL, 
“On the Authority of General Councils.”) To the same effect is the West- 
minster Confession, XXXI. 2, 3, 


Part III. 


‘AUTONOMY. 


3 AR en gee ters: 


There is a singularity which is the element of progress; but there is a 
catholicity which is the condition of permanence.—B. F. Westcott. 


Ecclesiasticism has often put conscience in deadly peril. But history has 
also its warning against the intolerance of separatists—Newman Smyth. 


Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great: 
Christian love among the churches looked the twin of heathen hate. 
—Tennyson. 


Men are loath to be persuaded that they imve spent so much breath to so 
little purpose, and have been so hot and eager for somewhat which at last 
appears to be a matter of Christian liberty—Stillingfect. 


But what is left to men’s discretion is not therefore meant to be left to 
their indiscretion—Richard Whately. 


In vain the surge’s angry shock, 
In vain the drifting sands; 
Unharmed upon the eternal rock 
The eternal City stands. —Samuel Johnson. 


(372) 


i, 
THE CONGREGATIONAL IDEA. 


WE can imagine all the Christian congregations of the world 
united in a single organization—one world-wide, self-governing 
communion. But it would be simply a bold venture of the imag- 
ination. The most conspicuous and persistent attempt to actual- 
ize the conception has given rise to the chief tragedies of eccle- 
siastical history. Neither by force nor by rational, righteous, and 
brotherly methods has such a dream been able to find fulfillment 
hitherto. 

We can imagine a national church. Let it be without organic 
connection with the state, self-governing. But let it be accepted 
with practical unanimity as representing the Christianity of the 
nation, and let it not extend beyond the national boundaries—one 
nation, one church. Such an ecclesiasticism has been proposed 
by certain serious inventive minds. But an example of it is not 
now to be found in any land. Indeed, in what age and under 
what sky has an example of it ever yet appeared? 

What we do see is a number of separate and self-governing 
churches, occupying Christendom and penetrating continually 
into the missionary regions beyond. Some of them, happily, are 
becoming more and more closely assimilated in spirit, teaching, 
and labor for the kingdom of God. As to size, the disparity 
among them is great indeed. There are those that number no 
more than five or six persons—as, for instance, certain Congrega- 
tional or Baptist churches—while on the other hand the Church 
of Rome reports a membership of over two hundred millions. 

We see churches, also, that have lost their autonomy by sub- 
mitting to the control of the state. These are national establish- 
ments—as in Germany, England, Russia—dependent for law and 
government upon the rulers of the respective nations in whose 
territories they are situated." 


“We distinguish between a National and an Established Church; for the 
one we feel the utmost reverence, but the other we do not even respect. 


(373). 


374 Christianity as Organized 


Now it is this denominational idea of organized Christianity 
that offers the present and final phase of our subject. 

Nor, as a matter of course, shall we be content simply to bring 
the denomination in which we are personally most interested 
within the circle of observation. Rather let the radius be length- 
ened so that the chief organic forms in which the various church- 
es of Christendom are facing the future shall be included. Thus 
at least may be avoided the not uncommon error of those who 


take the rustic murmur of their burg 
For the great wave that murmurs round the world. 


And so also may we get a better understanding of that which is 
our own, and haply learn to appreciate it more truly. 


It will be fitting to begin with the simplest and most primitive 
of all the ways of church organizing—with the Congregational 
Idea. 

Each church, or congregation of Christians, must govern it- 
self and manage its own affairs, by a majority vote of its mem- 
bership, independently of all outside authority whatever. That is 
the original formative idea of congregationalism. 

Is it also the fundamental New Testament idea of structural 
Christianity? Whether this be so or not, it is certain that other 
organic ideas than that of local democratic self-government be- 
came dominant in the second century. And not until fifteen 
hundred years had passed did the congregational polity which, 
it is believed with good reason, prevailed in the New Testament 
churches, begin to take form and reappear.” Its representatives 


The church that has failed to make a nation believing, reverent, and dutiful 
to God may be an Established Church, without being in any real or even in a 
tolerated sense national.” (Fairbairn, “Studies in Religion and Theology,” p. 4.) 

1°Tt [congregationalism] was originally a divine gift, made through spir- 
itual guidance of the New Testament churches to the Church of all time. 
It was a gift germinal and typical, though crude; tender, though fresh and 
vigorous. It suffered in the early centuries an arrest of development: it lay 
dormant yet vital in the garden of the Lord through many medieval cen- 
turies. In the sixteenth century in England it was dug out of its place of 
hiding and sleeping with the sword of the Word.” (Ladd, “Principles of 
Church Polity,” p. 338.) 


The Congregational Idea 375 


were the Anabaptists of the European Continent and the English 
Separatists. 

Let us give attention first to the latter body, and trace some 
of the conditions and circumstances in which its congregations 
originated. 


I. Or1IGINAL MOTIVE OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES. 


It was in the sixteenth century. The Church of England was 
an episcopally governed Establishment. ‘The Puritans, a strong 
and influential party, were opposed to episcopacy (as well as to 
Romish dogmas and practices) but favorable to the union of 
Church and State—especially favorable, if their successors of the 
next century who emigrated to America may be taken as typical, 
to the Church’s getting control of the State. All baptized per- 
sons were regarded (save in the rare case of excommunication) 
as church members—which, indeed, was equally the case on the 
Continent. The sovereign, without any reference whatever to 
his moral or religious character, must be not only a member of 
the Church but its supreme ruler. As might, therefore, easily 
have been foreseen, there was practically no discipline in moral 
conduct. But it is contrary to the word of Christ that men 
should be enrolled as Christians simply on the ground of their 
baptism in infancy; and that the notorious evil-liver, even ‘“‘pro- 
fane atheists” and “scandalous mockers,”’ should kneel side by 
side at the Lord’s table with the true, however imperfect, believ- 
er. This all-inclusive membership was destructive of the spirit- 
ual character and power of a Christian congregation. At least 
there were Englishmen of that time who had this conviction. 
The Puritans had it; and they looked to the civil magistrates to 
effect the needed reformation.. There were others, however, a 
feeble folk, who saw no remedy for the prevalent lack of dis- 


*It should not be overlooked that the Puritans were as much concerned 
for a pure and evangelical church as were the Separatists; but they hoped 
and strove for reform from within. “They [the Puritans] say, the time is 
not yet come to build the Lord’s house (Haggai i.) ; they must tarry for the 
magistrates and for Parliament to do it. They want the civil sword for- 
sooth. . . . For his [Christ’s] government and discipline is wanting (say 


al ia s hee : X t ] 
376 Christianity as Orgamzed 


cipline so long as Church and State were united. What should 
they do? 

Disestablishment, a living question for the present generation, 
was not dreamed of at that time. Nevertheless something might 
be done at once. Those who believed the administration of the 
Establishment to be other than that of a true church of Christ 
could withdraw from it and form self-governing congregations 
of their own in which the word of God might be preached, wor- 
ship offered, and discipline administered, according to their con- 
ception of the New Testament teaching. And this is what 
they did. These were the Separatists, who were afterwards 
called Independents (unlovely titles, both) and Congregation- 
alists. 

The original motive of Congregationalism, then, was neither 
doctrinal nor legislative, but disciplinary. It was distinctly a 
moral motive—not a desire for a scriptural in place of an un- 
scriptural creed, nor a scriptural in place of an unscriptural form 
of government, but the desire for a scriptural in place of an un- 
scriptural state of discipline. 

The Separatists did reach the conclusion, however, in the rapid 
course of study and investigation, that the polity which, chiefly 
or wholly for disciplinary purposes, they had been led to adopt 
was in accordance with the teachings of Jesus and his Apostles. 
It was not—so they held—an invention of their own but a re- 
nascence of the New Testament order. 

‘Another formative idea of the ecclesiastical government thus 
initiated was that of the fellowship of the churches. Though 
each must stand absolutely independent of all control by the 


they), but we keep it not away.” (Browne, “Reformation without Tarrying 
for Any” (Old South Leaflets), pp. 2, 3.) 

“The Puritan remembered that the sixteenth century had seen the con- 
stitution, liturgy, and doctrinal standards of the English Church essentially 
altered at least four times by the united action of the Sovereign and of 
Parliament. . . . They constantly hoped that that which had been estab- 
lished by law would be changed by legislative act. Nor was there, at first, 
anything that seemed unlikely in this supposition.” (Walker, “Creeds and 
Platforms of Congregationalism,” p. 97.) 


The Congregational Idea 377 


test, nevertheless each must come into cordial association with 
the rest. This idea, indeed, was inevitable. It is as old as Chris- 
tianity and as continuous as the Church itself. In truth it is 
hardly to be conceived that churches of the same faith and order 
should exist side by side without some sort of intercommunica- 
tion and communion. They must needs affiliate with one an- 
other. 


2. ENGLISH CONGREGATIONAL HIsTory. 


The first advocate and exemplifier of these views, “the father 
of modern Congregationalism,’’ was Robert Browne (d. 1633, 
aged about 80). He was educated at Cambridge University. 
About the year 1580, in the city of Norwich, he became pastor 
of what may be called the first Congregational church of modern 
times. 

Browne came to be looked upon as a fanatic, a grievous trou- 
bler of Israel in both his sayings and doings. In fact, he was 
a hot-headed, if not a headstrong, young man, who embodied 
very well the violent spirit of the times. So severely was he op- 
posed by the Establishment that both pastor and flock were fain 
to flee to the Continent. Here, in the town of Middleburg, Hol- 
land, he wrote tracts—for example, “Reformation without Tar- 
rying for Any”—which were sent in sheets to England, and 
there bound and distributed. In the course of a few years, how- 
ever, he again appears in England, and after repeated impris- 
- onment by the civil authorities becomes reconciled to the Estab- 
lished Church. For the last forty-two years of his life we find 
him holding the rectorship of the parish of Achurch cum Thorpe. 
He was accused of much misconduct in old age; and his death 
occurred in a jail to which he was committed for striking an 
officer of justice. 

It was indeed a difficult career to explain. But not so the 
views on church polity which were set forth by the impulsive and 
indiscreet young reformer. These are entirely sane and clear. 
He taught that civil magistrates ought not to exercise any eccle- 
siastical authority, being divinely intended to rule the nation, 


378 Christianity as Organized 


and not the Church;* that it may become the duty of Christ’s 
followers to withdraw from existing religious bodies, and form 
congregations of their own, for the sake of pure teaching and 
salutary discipline; that a church is a company of Christian be- 
lievers united in one holy communion by a willing covenant with 
God, under the government of God and Christ; that all church 
authority is in Christ the Lord, and is expressed through the 
action of the whole congregation; that the scriptural officers of 
a church are a pastor, a teacher, one or more elders, one or 
more relievers (deacons), and one or more “widows” (deacon- 
esses); that different churches ought to associate together for 
mutual counsel and guidance; that Christians ought to watch 
over and reprove each other as may be deemed fit, jealously 
guarding the purity of the Church. Such was Congregation- 
alism in the mind and from the pen of its first pronounced rep- 
resentative in modern Christianity.” 

The church in Holland, however, in which Browne tried to 
realize his ideal, proved a disappointment. Its members, exiles 
though they were for conscience’ sake, failed to show themselves 
capable of self-government. There seems to have been a larger 


“Go to, therefore, and the outward power and civil forcings let us leave 
to the magistrates; to rule the commonwealth in all outward justice belong- 
eth to them; but let the Church rule in spiritual wise and not in worldly 
manner, by a lively law preached and not by a civil law written.” (“Refor- 
mation without Tarrying for Any,” p. 16.) ‘ 

*For a very full and spirited account, read Dexter’s “Congregationalism 
as Seen in Its Literature,” Lecture IJ. This author makes no question of 
finding the true historic origin of modern Congregationalism in Brownism: 
“Of one thing as a matter of sober history there can be no doubt: that this 
system—which may as fairly be called Brownism as the inductive is called 
the Baconian philosophy, . . . this system—which, as we shall have oc- 
casion to see, was soon swept aside and out of sight by rival and variant 
systems, and covered with obloquy from its founder’s fate—proved yet to 
have vitality enough, and enough of adaptation to the demands of human life, 
to resume and reassert its interrupted sway; so that, although the thought 
may not be in their minds, the Independents of England and the Congrega- 
tionalists of America, more nearly than any other, are to-day in lineal 
descent from that little Norwich church of two hundred and ninety-six years 
ago” (p. 114). Hi sa es é 3 » ea 


The Congregational Idea 379 


development of inquisition, bickering, and division among them 
than of Christly admonition and discipline. 

Yet in England the idea persisted, and was modified from time 
to time by its advocates in the direction of greater practicable- 
ness. One of these modifications was that of Henry Barrowe, 
who died on the scaffold, a martyr to his faith, on April 6, in 
the thirty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. According to 
Barrowe, the congregation should elect elders as its rulers, and 
thus govern itself not directly but through representatives. Still 
it must stand independent of all ecclesiastical government except 
its own; and so it cannot become Presbyterian, but notwithstand- 
ing its ruling eldership will remain congregational. 

Of this ecclesiological doctrine, which has been named after 
its author Barrowism, two schools developed: the High-Church 
(as it may be called for lack of a better name), which held that 
the elders alone ought to govern, and the Low-Church, which 
held that the decisions of the elders must be confirmed by the 
consent of the whole congregation. 

Even this internal and local presbyterial oversight, however, 
was, in the eyes of some Separatists, unscriptural and hurtful. 
The congregation, they maintained, cannot shift its responsibility 
for government and discipline upon a select number of men, 
but must claim its own rights and bear its own burdens. Christ 
said not, “Tell it to the elders,” but, ‘“Tell it to the church;” and 
it was unbelievable that the elders are the church. Accordingly 
in the congregation of John Robinson, “the Pilgrim pastor,” at 
Leyden, the eldership was regarded as simply an office of coun- 
sel and moral influence, not of rule. The government was in 
the hands of the whole brotherhood of the faithful. In this, 
therefore, Robinson and his people were more nearly Brownists 
than Barrowists. 

In England, Congregationalism advanced from its humble be- 
ginnings till, in the time of the Commonwealth, it rose to promi- 
nence and power. Both the Lord Protector himself and a ma- 
jority of the leading men of his government were favorable to 
its form of polity. It was influential, though far from dominant, 


380 Christianity as Organized 


in the Westminster Assembly. Its annals have shone with not 
a few of the brightest names in English Christianity—Owen, 
Watts, Doddridge, Jay, Binney, Dale, Joseph Parker, A. M. 
Fairbairn. 

It has made but little use of the eldership. For many years 
it looked with little favor also upon associations and councils of 
the churches. But in the year 1832 the “Congregational Union 
of England and Wales” was formed, with deliberative and ad- 
visory powers and with a Declaration of Faith, adopted in 1833. 
Its meetings are held semiannually, and its influence has been 
promotive of fraternity and good works. 


3. AMERICAN CONGREGATIONAL History. 


The history of John Robinson’s congregation affords an in- 
teresting illustration of the Congregational idea. It began three 
hundred years ago as a “house church” in the home of William 
Brewster, the postmaster at Scrooby, England. There, accord- 
ing to Bradsford’s “History,” a company of Christians “joined 
themselves by a covenant of the Lord into a church estate in the 
fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways made known 
or to be made known unto them, according to their best en- 
deavors, whatever it shall cost them.” Of the three great ideas 
represented by this covenant of a despised little church of Christ 
in the house of William Brewster, in the year 1606—obedience 
at all costs to the will of God as it may be made known, equality 
and fellowship of Christians in the Lord, and the right to con- 
gregational self-rule—Congregationalism has always stood as a 
conspicuous example. In this particular case the Scrooby cove- 
nanters were soon called upon to pay the “costs.”” They were 
driven by persecution from their own land. They found a 
refuge, however, first at Amsterdam and afterwards at Leyden. 
Thence, eleven years later, one hundred and two of them, includ- 
ing wives and children, set sail in the Mayflower for their stormy 
voyage to the coast of America. 

So it was from this Scrooby-Amsterdam-Leyden congrega- 
tion of John Robinson that the Pilgrim Fathers came to New 


The Congregational Idea 381 


England. Here the eldership was exalted into a ruling office. 
It is true that, according to the Cambridge Platform, which was 
adopted by a synod of New England churches in 1648—the 
Puritans of Massachusetts Colony having meantime become 
Congregationalists—the elders were only to admit members ap- 
proved by the church, and to excommunicate members renounced 
by the church.” But it would seem that practically in either case 
the people codperated little or not at all. The pastor would 
sometimes even veto the votes of the congregation. 

There were also tendencies toward making larger use of as- 
sociations of the churches, and strengthening their power and 
influence. Such proposals were offered as that “each ministerial 
association make up an ecclesiastical council, or presbytery, to 
hear and determine all affairs too mighty for disposal by a sin- 
gle church;” and such declarations as that “the consociation of 
churches is the very soul and life of the Congregational scheme, 
necessary to the very esse as well as bene of it.” 

But there were countercurrents. These were well represent- 
ed by two noted and influential men—by John Wise, “the first 
great American democrat,” a trenchant and fiery controvertist, in 
the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and Nathaniel Em- 
mons, a man of preéminent ability as preacher, teacher, and the- 
ologian, a century later. This reactionary movement increased 
in strength till the churches were brought back substantially to 
the original Congregational idea. In this they stand at the pres- 
ent day—without an eldership (apart from the pastor) as well as 
without authoritative control by any association or council of 
churches. 


1“They had formerly professed to despise the Separatists, but scarcely 
had the shores of England receded from their view when they felt a sense 
of freedom as never before, and this feeling took a deeper hold on them 
until they found themselves no longer Puritans in the original sense, but 
Separatists pure and simple.” (Elson, “History of the United States,” p. 106.) 

“The ruling elder’s work is to join with the pastor and teacher. 
I. To open and shut the doors of God’s house, by the admission of members 
approved by the church . . . and by excommunication of notorious and 
obstinate offenders renounced by the church.” (Cambridge Platform, VII. 2.) 


382 Christianity as Organized 


To-day, however, both in British and in American Congrega- 
tionalism, the emphasis is laid on denominational codperation 
rather than local independence. The need of united and. harmo- 
nious action in matters of common concernment—such as the prep- 
aration of candidates for the ministry, the strengthening of fee- 
ble churches, the taking up of work in neglected fields, the con- 
duct of benevolent and missionary enterprises—is more fully 
provided for. Thus the work of the representative bodies of the 
Church has been enlarged. And while the autonomy of the lo- 
cal congregation is maintained, the larger “autonomy of the de- 
nomination,” it has been urged, “should be the next step in the 
development of the Congregational polity.’” 

The growth of this idea of a more distinct and effective de- 
nominational autonomy is shown in the frequency and regularity 
of the meetings of the general synod, or council, of American 
Congregationalism during the last half century, as compared 
with the previous practice. The first meeting of this kind was 
held in the year 1637; the second, in 1646, with adjourned meet- 
ings the two following years; the third, not for two hundred 
years afterwards—namely, in 1852; the fourth, in 1865. But in 
the year 1871, the “National Council of the Congregational 
Churches of the United States” was organized, and it has held 
triennial meetings continuously from that time. 

Two of the declarations of this Council, made at the time of 
its establishment, set forth in the clearest possible manner the 
fundamental principles alike of historic and present-day Congre- 
gationalism: 


They [the Congregational churches of the United States, by delegation 
assembled] agree in the belief that the right of government resides in local 


“Tt [the National Council] indorsed radical changes of polity in the di- 
rection of compactness and consolidation of Congregational interests, of su- 
pervision, and of putting the direction of benevolent and missionary work 
into the hands of representatives of the churches. 

“Tt indorsed the plan for a national Congregational brotherhood and ap- 
pointed a committee of twenty-nine to organize it. 

“It appointed a committee of nine in the interests of more efficient minis- 
terial training and equipment.” (“The Congregationalist,” Oct. 26, 1907.) 


The Congregational Idea 383 


churches, or congregations of believers, who are responsible directly to the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the one Head of the Church Universal and of all par- 
ticular churches; but that all churches, being in communion one with an- 
other as parts of Christ’s Catholic Church, have mutual duties subsisting in 
the obligations of fellowship. 

The churches, therefore, while establishing this National Council, for the 
furtherance of the common interests and work of all the churches, do main- 
tain the scriptural and inalienable right of each church to self-government 
and administration; and this National Council shall never exercise legislative 
or judicial authority, nor consent to act as a Council of Reference. 


4. PRINCIPLES AND RULES OF CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES. 


This, then, is Congregationalism. It represents the two great 
complementary conceptions of autonomy and fellowship. Here 
is its distinction: no other system combines and embodies these 
two principles in its organic law. 

It is a pure democracy. The government, both legislative and 
judicial, is not only for the people but by them; and not indi- 
rectly through chosen representatives, but by their own direct ac- 
tion. Of necessity, therefore, it is bodied forth in thousands of 
little ecclesiastical bodies, either widely separated or side by side, 
each of which is democratically self-governing. The opera- 
tion of no law extends beyond the congregation in which it is 
enacted. 

Taking American Congregationalism as the type, let us mark 
some of the more important features of Congregational economy : 


The organization of the churches is simple and consistent. Members that 
have reached the age of twenty-one years are entitled to a vote on all ques- 
tions. The officers are the pastor (or minister, or elder) and the deacons. 
No distinction of grades or orders—such as the diaconate, the presbyterate, 
the episcopate—is recognized. The pastor is not a ruler, but only the mod- 
erator ex officio of congregational meetings. In case of his absence any 
member of the meeting may be chosen to preside. It is his duty, while in 
charge of a congregation, to do the customary service of a Christian pastor. 
Once ordained, he is regarded as retaining his ministerial office even when 
not holding a pastoral charge. 

The deacons assist in the administration of the Lord’s Supper, and care 
for the sick and the poor, and are advisers of the pastor. Their election, 
which was formerly for life, is in the present day usually for a term of 
years. For this reason the rite of ordination to this office, which was also 
formerly observed, has in most churches been discontinued, 


384 Christianity as Organized 


The deacons, together with the clerk (who is elected to keep the records 
of the church and the roll of membership), in some instances the treasurer, 
and two or three other members, constitute what is called the Church Com- 
mittee. It is the duty of this committee to consult with the pastor concerning 
the interests of the congregation, to prepare business for congregational 
meetings, and to present at such meetings the names of persons to be re- 
ceived into the church or expelled from its membership. 

Much use is made of Occasional Councils. These are composed of min- 
isters and lay delegates from a number of churches, and are convened at the 
request of some particular church, sometimes to ordain or install a minister, 
and sometimes to give advice on some occasion of importance. These occa- 
sions are such, for example, as the following: When a number of persons 
desire to organize themselves into a church; when a candidate for the min- 
istry wishes to be approved for ordination; when there is serious dissension 
in a church; and so on. Congregational usage also recognizes such a council 
as the ordaining body. In all cases, however, even in that of the trial of 
a minister and his expulsion from membership in a local church, authorita- 
tive action can be taken by the local church only. 

Besides these Occasional Councils, convened for special cases, there are 
assemblies that meet regularly for consultation, the promotion of fellowship, 
and the general direction and encouragment of the work of the churches. 
These are Associations, State Conferences (in a few states called State 
Associations, and in a few other State Conventions), and the National 
Council. They are all composed of representatives, lay and ministerial, from 
the churches. 

The Association represents the churches of a comparatively small district, 
and usually meets twice a year. Here the condition of the churches is re- 
ported, and various questions relating to their needs and the advancement of 
the cause of Christ among them are discussed. It is expected of every 
Congregational church that it shall have membership in such an Association. 

State Conferences represent the churches of a state or territory; and it 
is required that the churches thus represented shall be members of some 
Association. In its general purpose and proceedings the State Conference 
differs but little from the Association. Its meetings are annual. 

The National Council is composed of delegates, either ministers or lay- 
men, elected by Associations, State Conferences, faculties of colleges and 
theological seminaries, and societies for Christian work. Only the repre- 
sentatives of Associations and Conferences, however, vote in its meetings. 
It is recommended that the delegations, as far as possible, consist of min- 
isters and laymen in equal numbers. The meetings of the National Council 
are triennial; but special sessions may be called at any time at the request 
of five State Conferences.* 


“Tt has helped greatly in the solution of important questions and shown 
that union is possible without uniformity. It will in the future be increas- 


The Congregational Idea 385 


It must not be overlooked that these regular assemblies, district, state, 
and national, like the Occasional Councils, are permitted in no case whatever 
to exercise authority over the churches. They meet for mutual sympathy 
and helpfulness in extending the kingdom of Christ. They advise, but never 
command. Still it is in their power to deny fellowship to a church which, 
because of rejecting their advice, or for any other cause, may be deemed un- 
worthy; just as on the other hand any church, in the exercise of its own 
judgment and conscience, may withdraw from association with them. In 
like manner the Association and the State Conference to which a minister 
belongs may withdraw fellowship from him, or he from them. 

Candidates for the ministry are expected to pursue a course of literary 
and theological preparation, and to be approved, or nominated, by some body 
of ministers or of ministers and laymen (though this custom, it seems, is not 
always observed). They are then eligible to be called to the pastorate of a 
church, ordained to the ministry, and installed as pastors. The ordination 
itself should be performed with prayer and the imposition of hands by a 
council called for the purpose; and so also should each separate installation 
in the pastorate. At the close of the ceremony, the right hand of fellowship 
is given by the council to the newly ordained minister, who is thus received 
into recognized association with his ministerial brethren. 

Lay ordination and installation is contrary to the prevalent practice, 
though not to the fundamental principles of Congregationalism. “Let them 
be ordained by the leathern mitten of the laity rather than not at all.’”* 


The missionary work of the churches is carried on through 
voluntary societies. Of these the oldest and most notable is the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. This, 
indeed, is the oldest foreign missionary society in the United 
States. Its originators were a little group of theological stu- 
dents, Samuel John Mills and others, at Andover Seminary. 
Organized a century ago (1810), the American Board is rep- 
resented in the foreign field, according to recent statistics, by 
594 missionaries and 4,125 native laborers. And while it can- 
not be shown that the polity of Congregationalism is itself espe- 
cially well adapted to either home or foreign evangelization, the 
enlightened interest of its people in this work, as proved by their 
pecuniary contributions, is unsurpassed except in the extraordi- 
nary instance of the Moravian Church. 


ingly the rallying place and unifying power of the denomination.” (Boynton, 
“The Congregational Way,” p. 136.) 

*Boynton, “The Congregational Way;”’ Walker, “Creeds and Platforms of 
Congregationalism ;” Ladd, “Principles of Church Polity.” 


25 


386 Christianity as Organized 


5. RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE BAPTIST CHURCHES. 


Earlier in origin than the Congregationalists, and earlier like- 
wise in the adoption of a purely democratic form of government, 
were the Baptists. They appeared first in Switzerland, as the 
despised sect of Anabaptists, toward the close of the first quarter 
of the sixteenth century. Many things were they called to suffer 
at the hands of both the Protestant State Church and the Roman- 
ists. Confiscation of property, imprisonment, slavery, exile, and 
burning at the stake were the means employed for their extermi- 
nation. Many also were the fanatical excesses of belief and con- 
duct into which, through ignorance, emotionalism, and persecu- 
tion, they were driven. These fanatical vagaries discredited what 
was true and good in their testimony, breaking its force and 
bringing it into contempt.” Nevertheless, their numbers increased 
and their doctrines spread far and wide. 

Narrowly sectarian, were they not? Under the circumstances 
it was well-nigh inevitable that they should be so. Besides, as 
some one has aptly said: “It is quite possible for a flowerpot or 
a religious body to be exceeding narrow, and yet to harbor the 
germinating seed of something very great.” It was a prophetic 
utterance of one of the early martyrs of this particular “religious 
body,” Balthasar Hibmaier: “Truth is immortal; and though 
for a long time she be imprisoned, scourged, crowned with 
thorns, crucified and buried, she will yet rise victorious on the 
third day and will reignand triumph.” Nor has the subsequent his- 
tory of the persecuted congregations for which this eloquent Chris- 
tian witness-bearer died at the stake, dishonored his faith. The 
membership of their successors is numbered now by the million. 

In the Low Countries they followed the leadership of a de- 
vout, sensible, and conscientious Christian teacher, Menno Sim- 
ons; and were called, after his name, Mennonites. 

Before the close of the sixteenth century and in the early part 
of the seventeenth a number of Baptists might be found in En- 


1Some Baptist writers make a distinction between Anabaptists and Baptists. 
?Neal, “History of the Puritans,” Vol. L., p. 137. 


The Congregational Idea 387 


gland. Like their brethren on the Continent, whence indeed 
many of them had fled as refugees, they were made to eat the 
bitter bread of affliction: witness the sweet-spirited, imaginative 
genius, John Bunyan, suffering so long the “‘noisomeness and ill 
usage” of a seventeenth century jail for conscience’ sake. “Of 
whom”—humble, elect, heroic spirits—neither “the world” nor 
‘the Church of their day was “worthy.” 

The Baptists have held with remarkable consistency and una- 
nimity the theory of a pure ecclesiastic democracy. No “Bar- 
rowism” seems ever to have disturbed it. Not that this idea 
of government is universally practiced by them; for in many 
cases—perhaps in nearly all—congregations are ruled, as a mat- 
ter of fact, by the few rather than the many. But the purely 
democratic theory is everywhere maintained as a Scripture doc- 
trine; and all church members have an equal right to practice it, 
if they will. The idea of individualism is carried to a further 
extreme than among the present-day Congregationalists. 

The Regular Baptists of the United States, beginning with a 
feeble little “church in the wilderness,” organized by Roger Wil- 
liams in 1639, have increased unto a membership of over five 
millions. Strongly denominational, cut off by their beliefs from 
full fellowship with other Christian denominations, they have 
embodied their views of New Testament teaching as to the con- 
stitution of a Christian church, in ever-multiplying congregations 
throughout the land. 

The consensus of belief as to church organization in the American Baptist 
churches is about as follows: 

A church is a company of true believers in Christ—and hence of regen- 
erate persons—baptized on profession of their faith and united in a Christian 
covenant. Baptism is by “the immersion, dipping, or burying a candidate in 
the water.” There is no other scriptural or permissible mode. 

Each church, or congregation, is self-governing. As to its laws, it does 
not make but only executes them. They are to be found in the one authori- 
tative statute book of Christ’s churches—namely, the New Testament. 

The officers of a church are of two classes only—pastors and deacons. A 
pastor is a bishop, or elder (the two terms being interchangeable in the 
New Testament, and therefore to be so used now), who has the oversight 


of a congregation; an evangelist is a bishop, or elder, who travels from place 
to place as a preacher of the gospel. 


388 Christianity as Organized 


Any number of persons, though it be two only, may unite to form a 
church; and every member of a church, without respect to age, sex, intel- 
ligence, or maturity of Christian character, is entitled to vote.* 

Though each church chooses and ordains its own minister, this is reg- 
ularly done, as in Congregational churches, with the approval of a Council 
called for the purpose, and consisting of an invited company (presbytery) of 
ministers, or of ministers and laymen, from other churches. The form of 
ordination includes prayer and the laying on of hands; and any person whom 
the candidate and the church shall select may perform the ceremony. 

Indeed, the Occasional Council serves substantially the same particular 
purposes in the Baptist as in the Congregational churches. 

Deacons are not only to have the care of the sick and the poor and of 
various temporalities, and to distribute the bread and wine at the Lord’s 
Supper, but also to counsel and assist the pastor concerning all the interests 
of the church. They are elected, in some instances, for life; in others, for a 
limited period, which is usually three years. It is not proper for them to 
hold meetings of their own, apart from the pastor, as if they were them- 
selves an official board. As a matter of fact, their office is in very many 
cases more nominal than real. 

Naturally enough the churches of a certain territory would desire to be 
associated together as closely as possible. Accordingly, their pastors and a 
fixed number of messengers, or delegates, may meet annually for the purpose 
of advising and consulting concerning matters of general interest. Such a 
meeting is a Baptist Association. Its sessions are for two days or longer. 
While exercising no control whatever over the churches, it may decline for 
satisfactory reasons to receive their ministers or delegates, and thus exclude 
this or that church from its fellowship. 

Another society is the State Convention, or General Association. This is 
a missionary organization. It is entirely independent of the Associations, 
though these may and sometimes do report to it and work in codperation 
with it. Its membership rests chiefly on a monetary basis, being composed 
of the messengers of contributing churches or societies, and persons who 
themselves pay a certain amount of money into its treasury. 

There is also the Northern Baptist Convention for the North and West, 
and a similar society, the Southern Convention, for the rest of the country, 
whose main objects are the promotion of home and foreign missions and 
of Sunday schools. The meetings of both are held annually.” 


“Tn some few churches neither women nor minors have a vote, and per- 
haps in a large number the younger children are not expected to vote on 
questions of importance, though they may not by any rule be deprived of 
the right. It is true, also, that in very many of our churches, perhaps with 
regret we might say a majority of them, the larger part of the members do 
not attend the business meetings, and it is practically a fraction of the 
church which regulates its business concerns.” (Dargan, “Ecclesiology,” p. 113.) 

?Hiscox, “New Directory of Baptist Churches;” Dargan, “Ecclesiology.” 


The Congregational Idea 389 


In the English Baptist churches baptism is not regarded as 
an essential condition of admission to the Lord’s Supper. <Ac- 
cordingly, the English Baptists—as represented, for example, by 
such illustrious names as Bunyan, Robert Hall, and Charles H. 
Spurgeon—admit their brethren of other evangelical churches to 
commune with them at the Lord’s table. It is also true of Eng- 
lish Baptists that persons not baptized by immersion are in some 
instances admitted into church membership, and even elected to 
high official positions. 

Until recently the Baptist churches of the United States have 
not offered the communion of the Lord’s Supper to Christians 
of other churches. But at the present time there seems to be a 
strong tendency in the North toward “open communion.” 


More than most Christian churches, the Baptists, it is evident, 
regard the forms of worship, of the administration of sacra- 
ments, and of church government which seem to have obtained 
in the New Testament congregations, as binding precedents for 
all subsequent circumstances and times. But there arose, a cen- 
tury ago, in certain of their congregations, a movement intended 
to effect a still stricter conformity to New Testament precedents. 
This movement resulted in the organization of the churches of 
the Disciples of Christ. Restoration—‘“to take up things just 
as the Apostles left them’’—has been their watchword. 

The Disciples hold that “the New Testament is as perfect a 
constitution for the worship, discipline, and government of the 
New Testament Church . . . as the Old Testament was for 
the worship, the discipline, and government of the Old Testa- 
ment Church.’” And in the endeavor to embody this belief in 
practice, they make it a matter of church order, for example, to 
refuse to be called by any denominational name—regarding all 
such names as unscriptural and sectarian; to set forth no “human” 
creed or confession of faith—distinctly confessing, however, 
with tongue and pen, the New Testament teaching as they under- 


*Declaration and Address” of 1809, cited in Gates’s “The Disciples of 
Christ,” p. 51. 


390 Christianity as Organized 


stand it; to observe the Lord’s Supper weekly—quoting, as a de- 
terminative reason for this custom, Acts xx. 7, “And upon the first 
day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread, 
Paul discoursed with them;” to avoid the use of such titles as 
“Reverend,” making no distinction between ministers and lay- 
men, and calling their ministers “elder” only; to baptize by im- 
mersion and on the simple profession of belief in Jesus as the 
Christ. 

It is in pursuance of the same idea that the Disciples propose 
to copy—shall we not say, rather than imitate?—as closely as 
possible the form of government that appears in the churches 
of apostolic times. Their polity is purely congregational. Un- 
like the Baptists, but like the Presbyterians, they have a plural 
eldership.* 

The Disciples have a distinct plan and plea for the unification 
of the churches. Assuming their own faith and order to be the 
one true interpretation of the New Testament teaching, and 
hence the one common meeting ground of Christians, they ur- 
gently offer it as such.” 


6. ESTIMATE OF THE PuRELY DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF CHURCH 
GOVERNMENT. 


The excellences of the congregational polity are manifest. 

(1) Its simplicity commends it. Here is nothing complicated 
or excessive ; no undue multiplication of offices and functionaries, 
of dignities and prerogatives; no hierarchic pomp. All seems 
unpretentious, primitive, easy of apprehension and approval. It 
is Christianity most simply and transparently organized. There 
is little machinery among the stars; and as the planet—to use the 


“Our [the Baptist] churches have discarded the plurality of elders. It is 
our custom now, even in very large churches, to have only one active pastor, 
or elder, while it seems clear that in the New Testament churches, certainly 
the larger ones, there were several or even many elders.” (Dargan, “Eccle- 
siology,” p. 115.) 

2Article on “The Disciples of Christ” by F. D. Power, in the New Schaff- 
Herzog Encyclopedia; Gates, “The Disciples of Christ,” in The Story of the 
Churches Series; Moore, “The Plea of the Disciples of Christ.” 


The Congregational Idea 391 


favorite Congregational figure—revolves serenely about the two 
foci of its elliptical orbit, so the separate Christian congregations 
may be imagined as moving steadily and strongly about their 
two central principles of autonomy and fellowship. 

(2) Dispensing with the use of general governmental powers, 
it renders the arbitrary or tyrannical misuse of such powers im- 
possible. 

(3) It trusts the people. No conceivable right or privilege is 
denied them. No conceivable responsibility is spared them. 
They must even, as separate congregations, choose or frame their 
own confession of faith. And it is good to be trusted. What 
more effectually conduces to trustworthiness? Democracy is ed- 
ucative; responsibility broadens and strengthens the mind; ac- 
tivity promotes growth. 

I have heard it given, as a bit of personal experience, by a mis- 
sionary of long residence in the Chinese Empire: “Men will 
never be saved by being talked down to.” It is a principle of 
wide and varied application. People will never be elevated in 
thought and character by being governed, either in Church or 
State, as infants or other incapables. 

That the entire membership of a church, then, should be con- 
stantly called upon to deal with important practical, and even 
scriptural and theological, questions, suits men’s mental consti- 
tution. It tends to give simplicity, richness, and variety to their 
religious life. It may reasonably be expected to make them 
more intelligent, self-reliant, interested, efficient. ‘Therefore,” 
says with truth a Congregational writer, “we found schools and 
colleges almost as soon as our church spires rise heavenward.” 

Now it is true that the American Protestant churches may be 
said to be, almost without exception, largely democratic in gov- 
ernment. But in congregationally governed churches the de- 
mocracy being direct, or pure, and not simply, as in the other 
churches, representative, its proper individualizing effect will be 
most notable. 

(4) It encourages the sense of the headship of Christ over the 
congregation, and of immediate relation to him. Mediation and 


302 Christianity as Organized 


authority are here reduced to the lowest point. Christ is King. 
This human democracy, therefore, when the truest confession 
of it is made, proves to be a Divine monarchy. 

(5) It is promotive of fellowship and the exercise of spiritual 
gifts. It makes the church a body not of baptized persons but 
of Christian believers organized indeed for self-government, but 
also for mutual instruction, admonition, edification—as far as 
possible in its nature from a body of clergymen monopolizing all 
powers and offices." The weekly conference meeting or some 
similar form of fellowship is developed. There is prayer and 
speech concerning the Christian life and the advancement of 
Christ’s cause. Thus the ministry of gifts is encouraged. It 
seems fitting, for instance, that from Congregationalism such a 
lay evangelist as Dwight L. Moody, representing a great com- 
pany of lay workers that have since arisen, should have gone 
forth. 

Yet there is another side to the question. 

(1) Simplicity is good; but it should not be confused with a 
lack of differentiation. It is true that “there is little machinery 
among the stars,” but it is equally true that, so far as appears, 
the stars have very few things to do. Their functions are not 
nearly so numerous, for example, as those of the human body; 
and the body would be crippled in its activities by the loss of any 
one of the many organs with which it has been endowed. So 
likewise would a perfectly constituted church. It is neither ex- 
cessively nor inadequately organized. 

(2) Suffrage is not an inherent but an acquired right. Proper- 
ly speaking, it belongs to those who are competent to exercise 
it well, and to no others. It will not be maintained, therefore, 
that all church members, experienced and inexperienced, strong- 


1“Congregationalism has built into its very being, built in by vital processes 
of nutrition and growth, as food is built into the fabric of muscle and bone, 
a special development of the great New Testament doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit, as the illuminer, guide, and ruler of redeemed souls.” (Ladd, “Prin- 
ciples of Church Polity,” p. 45.) 


The Congregational Idea 393 


minded and weak-minded, worthy and unworthy, old and young, 
or even all members of mature age, have the right to vote on the 
often difficult questions of ecclesiastical government, creed, and 
discipline. 

But even if for the sake of argument such a right be con- 
ceded, would it not better in many instances be waived in favor 
of chosen representatives? In the civil community the majority 
of men are more competent to select suitable lawmakers than to 
make their own laws. Hence, while it has been discovered that 
men are best governed when permitted as far as possible to gov- 
ern themselves, it has also been discovered that they are best 
governed through representatives rather than by their own direct 
vote. And why should the case be radically different in the ec- 
clesiastical community? To make the collective membership of 
a church legislators and judges is not necessarily to set the pyra- 
mid upon its base. 

In brief, the question is that of a choice of rulers. Where 
shall we locate the direct supreme authoritative rulership? In 
each particular congregation, whether it be large or small, spir- 
itually enlightened or unenlightened, literate or illiterate, mainly 
composed of men or women or children? in a council of select 
representatives of many churches? in a single supreme overseer ? 
Where is the larger competency and the larger freedom from dis- 
turbing influences likely to be found? 

As to spiritual despotism, it is, to be sure, no phantom of an 
agitated brain, but an imminent possibility that must be faith- 
fully guarded against—a possibility that in numberless cases be- 
comes unquestionable fact. But the despotism of a pure democ- 
racy, whether it embrace a half million or only a half-score of 
voters, is no less real and no more tolerable than that of a con- 
ciliar government. 

Congregationalism, it has been said, will not reach its golden 
age till men are made ready for it: it is “preéminently the polity 
of perfect men, and it cannot do its perfect work until there be 
perfect men.’’ But meantime! In the problem of the perfecting 
of humankind, expediency and adaptation are certainly not neg- 


394 Christianity as Organized 


ligible factors. And while the form of government must rest on 
principles, it is not itself a principle. Let it be adjusted, there- 
fore, to men as they are, so as the better to help them become 
what they are to be. This, we may hope, rather than any more 
ideal organizing, will hasten the millennial day of “perfect men.” 

(3) The lack of centralized authority is unfavorable to large 
aggressive enterprises. True, a great work of evangelization, 
at home and abroad, may be done through the simple fellowship 
of the churches; but a greater work will be done through such 
a fellowship under a strongly unified administration.” 

(4) There are certain dangers, it will generally be admitted, 
to which the congregational form of government is somewhat 
specially inviting. One is the danger of vagaries in doctrine and 
usage. Another is the minister’s danger of becoming too much 
the creature of his congregation, instead of their ruler, guide, 
and leader, according to the appointment of Christ. 


*“Perhaps it would not be too much to say that the crowning reproach of 
the Baptists as a people, and their most conscientiously recognized fault, is 
their lack of efficiency as a whole. Their idle resources are a cause of keen 
mortfication to the most intelligent among them. . . . Now, the effective- 
ness of the Baptist churches, like other things, is a matter of parts and a 
whole; for it vitally depends on the proper relations of these parts to each 
other. No thoughtful Baptist can fail to see that here lies the principal 
weakness of our denomination. Some of our opponents do not hesitate to 
charge this upon our independent church polity; but surely, believing as we 
do that this polity is of divine appointment and of perpetual obligation, we 
cannot admit that the New Testament method is at fault.” (Dargan, “Ec- 
clesiology,” pp. 142, 143.) Apparently the author would recognize the need 
of some centralization of authority for the promotion of the efficiency of 
the churches, did not his belief that the congregational economy of the New. 
Testament is a binding precedent, forbid the idea. 

“The maintenance by local churches of entire freedom from ecclesiastical 
organization with responsibility or authority means slow growth as com- 
pared with that of organized denominations; and the controlling impulse of 
Christians in our time to evangelize the world makes the sacrifice of ag- 
gressive strength through remaining a loose aggregation of federated churches 
seem a very large cost for preserving unmodified our historic polity. Yet 
it may be that there is a quality of Christian character which can be Br 
served only through such a polity, and that this quality is worth the cost.” 
(The Congregationalist, July 27, 1907.) 


The Congregational Idea 395 


(5) The lack of connectionalism and centralization has a ten- 
dency to promote an unduly sensitive spirit of independence in 
the churches.” 

(6) It may well be doubted, simply on general principles of 
freedom and authority, that the functions of representative as- 
semblages of the churches should be limited to the giving of 
counsel. For is not too little authority as really hurtful as too 
much? It is good to be trusted, it is good to rule oneself; but it 
is also good to be commanded and to obey. Here again the 
analogy of civil government is not without its significance. That 
local churches should agree to be directed, in certain matters of 
general concern, by the will of a representative body duly re- 
stricted by constitutional safeguards, would seem to violate no 
right, to jeopard no interest, and to be promotive of a sieadier, 
more aggressive, more uniform and unifying government. 


*“The curse of Congregationalism, which not only hinders it from ful- 
filling its mission, but threatens its very existence, is ‘parochial selfishness.’ 
This is by no means confined to the Congregational churches, but is a graver 
danger under our free polity. Each church, being sufficient unto itself, thinks 
only of itself. It resents even advice from other churches, as an inter- 
ference with its supreme authority.” (Heermance, “Democracy in the 
Church,” p. 121.) 


II. 
THE CONCILIAR IDEA. 


MEN believe in government by others as truly as in self-gov- 
ernment. Claiming freedom, they trust themselves freely to au- 
thority. Both faiths are instinctive and universal, representing 
innate needs of the soul. Both are exemplified in the feeling of 
the child toward the parent—the home their birthplace and chief 
training school. Both are found in all conditions of life, in all 
positions whether public or private, in all states of society, under 
every form of civil administration. If ever men fought for self- 
government, it was the Spartans who died at Thermopyle; yet 
the monument above their dust bore the inscription: “O stranger, 
tell it at Lacedzemon that we lie here in obedience to her laws.” 
If ever a woman knew the power of self-command, it was Susan- 
nah Wesley ; yet when, in her husband’s absence, she was holding 
religious meetings which he had been led, as rector of the parish, 
to disapprove of, she wrote to him not to desire but to command 
her to desist—‘‘send me your positive command.” And it is cer- 
tain that the followers of her most illustrious son, in their vol- 
untary obedience to him, keeping the rigid rules of the United 
Society, offered a thousand fold illustration of the same principle. 

With respect to the Church as well as the State, both these 
principles of government by others and self-governing freedom 
are sanctioned in the New Testament. Concerning the State it 
is said, ‘Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers ;” 
concerning the Church it is said: “Obey them that have the rule 
over you, and submit to them.’” On the other hand, it is taught 
in the New Testament that men shall act for themselves in free- 
dom, according to their own judgment and conscience, even 
though contrary to civil or ecclesiastical law: “They will deliver 
you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge 


*Rom. xiii. I. ?Heb. xiii. 17. 


(396) 


The Conciliar Idea 397 


you; yea, and before governors and kings shall ye be brought 
for my sake;’”” “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or 
in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath 
day.”” 

Moreover, it is the teaching of the New Testament that the 
authority of the rulers whom the people must obey and submit 
to is intrusted to them by the Supreme Ruler. And it is only 
when these “ministers of God,’ in Church or State, so abuse 
their trust as to enforce enactments in violation of his declared 
will, that men, acting in freedom, may rightfully disobey them. 
Such disobedience, therefore, is itself under law. It is obedience 
to the law of God: “We must obey God rather than men;’” “Not 
being without law to God, but under law to Christ.”* If a man 
should “die unto the law’”—unto any law, civil or ecclesiastical— 
it must be that he may “live unto God.’” 

Now as regards these ultimate principles of freedom and au- 
thority, all reasonable men agree. It is in the adjustment of 
them either to other that difficulties start up. How much free- 
dom, or self-government, and how much authority, or govern- 
ment by others, in any particular case—that is the problem. 
None but an anarchist would approve the sad fanatics at the rise 
of the Lutheran Reformation, whose claim Calvin honors with a 
refutation, and assert that obedience to any civil magistrate is 
“incompatible with the perfection of that obedience accompany- 
ing the gospel of Christ.’’* But, on the other hand, few will be 
found in intellectual sympathy with the attitude described by 
John Henry Newman when he says: “I loved to act as feeling 
myself in my bishop’s sight as if it were the sight of God.’” 
These are the extremes—lawlessness and blind subservience. 
But always to find the golden mean, in the present state of human 
faculties and temperaments, is clearly impossible. 

In the Church, while Congregationalism stands for the largest 
possible freedom, Presbyterianism lays a heavy stress upon law. 


*Matt. x. 17, 18. Cole nie 0: *Acts v. 20. ot Corsuix 2m, 
®Gal. ii. 19. *“Tnstitutes,” IV., xx. 5. ™ Apologia” (1897), p. 50. 


398 Christianity as Organized 


Congregationalism commits the whole government of the con- 
gregation into the hands of the people; Presbyterianism, into the 
hands of a select body of men holding a lifetime office. Con- 
gregationalism will have only churches associated in a sisterhood 
to which not a feather’s weight of authority is intrusted; Pres- 
byterianism organizes many separate churches into one united 
Church, placing them all under a common and graded presbyteral 
control. 


1. THE CALVINIAN POLITY. 


Waiving for the present the question of its apostolic origin, 
let us look at this system of government as it was set forth by 
the great Genevan theologian and reformer.” 

Calvin was no Independent. He was far more a believer in 
law than in liberty. Discipline and restraint were to his mind 
very sacred words. “If he had lived in the Middle Ages,” says 
Dr. Philip Schaff, “he might have been a Hildebrand or an Inno- 
cent III.” Perhaps so. Nevertheless, the John Calvin of the 
sixteenth century was no prelatist. Himself as to political opin- 
ion an aristocrat and as to ecclesiastical rank only a layman, he 
chose for the Church a middle way equally removed from prelacy 
and from Independency. He would make church rulers of cho- 
sen laymen side by side with ministers. While magnifying au- 
thority, he would have the people represented, at least to some 
extent, in the seat of authority. 

But no autonomous congregations: the Church must be one. 
And Calvin’s gifts were constructive—those of a theologic and 
ecclesiastic upbuilder. In the matter of government, Luther was 
more successful in the destructive; Calvin, in the constructive. 
Luther with his fiery energy agitated, Calvin with his instinct of 
order crystallized. So, in opposition to the Roman hierarchy, 
there issued from his hand a strong, compact, and reasonable 
form of ecclesiastic administration, which claimed to rest on the 
foundation of the Hebrew Lawgiver and the Apostles, and was 


*Compare pp. 224-227. 


The Conciliar Idea 399 


not long in proving its adaptiveness and efficiency throughout a 
great breadth of Christendom. 

Shall we sketch the Calvinian polity as it is presented in the 
“Tnstitutes of the Christian Religion?’ The government of the 
Church is of Divine ordering,” absolutely necessary,’ and en- 
tirely distinct from civil polity;* the ordinary or permanent offi- 
cers of the Church are four—namely, the Pastor, the Teacher 
(for example, Hermas or Justin Martyr or a modern professor 
of theology),° the Lay-elder, and the Deacon.” These officers 
should be elected at a meeting held under the presidency of the 
Pastor ;* they should be ordained by one or more Pastors, with 
the laying on of hands;’ the judicatory of a church, to which its 
discipline is committed, should consist of the Pastor and Lay- 
elders;* the civil government must directly promote the interests 
of religion and punish offenses against it.” 

Under these guiding principles Calvin wrought out in detail 
the organization of reformed Christianity in Geneva. There 
were two governing bodies: (1) The Venerable Company, which 
consisted of ministers and theological professors only, and had 
charge of purely ecclesiastical matters—such, for example, as 
the preparation of candidates for the ministry, and their ordi- 
nation to office; (2) The Consistory, or Presbytery, made up of 
ministers and lay elders, whose function was the administration 
of discipline. This court could inflict only ecclesiastic penalties. 


1“We must now treat of the order which it has been the Lord’s will to 
appoint for the Church.” (Institutes, IV., iii. 1.) 

2“Hor neither the light and heat of the sun, nor any meat and drink, are 
so necessary to the nourishment and sustenance of the present life, as the 
apostolical and pastoral office is to the preservation of the Church in the 
world.” (Jbid., IV., iii. 2.) 

“opabe ING Sei Tie 

4“A teacher or doctor is of most excellent use in schools and universities ; 
as of old in the schools of the prophets and at Jerusalem, where Gamaliel 
and others taught as doctors.” (“Form of Presbyterian Church Govern- 
ment.” ) 

"Institutes, IV., iii. 9. STbid., IV., iti. 15. "Tbid., IV., iii. 16. 

8Tbid., IV., xi. 6. *Ibid., 1V., xx. 9. 


400 Christianity as Organized 


But it could deliver offenders into the hands of the Council, 
which was a civil court for the infliction of civil penalties. 

Both Council and Consistory were inquisitorial tribunals. It 
was a part of their business, by house-to-house visitations and 
otherwise, to search closely into the moral and religious life of 
the people, and bring them to punishment for delinquencies. But 
the extreme rigor of their discipline brought the whole system 
into discredit and defeated its object. 

As to the part of the people in the government of the Genevan 
Church, it was very small. They were called upon to confirm 
the election of the ministerial members of the Venerable Com- 
pany and the Consistory; that was all. Practically the govern- 
ment seems to have been that of an oligarchy. 

In the Institutes, as just said, Calvin advocates for the Church 
a spiritual polity “entirely distinct from the civil polity.” But as 
a matter of fact the two polities were not kept distinct in the 
church as it was organized in Geneva. For the pastors were sup- 
ported at the public expense, and the city magistrates must elect 
(out of their own number) the lay elders of the Consistory, and 
must confirm all nominations to pastoral charges. The State was 
to be a Christian State, and as such must be incorporated with 
the Church, giving it governmental and financial support, and 
including all citizens in the church membership. At the same 
time the Church must maintain its own supremacy in matters of 
doctrine and morals, and make authoritative use of the State to 
enforce discipline. This was about the nature of the alliance be- 
tween these two divine institutions in Geneva. It was more of 
the Old Testament than of the New, more Mosaic than apos- 
tolic. It called for civil punishments—imprisonment, whipping, 


*Tt does not follow that because a Jewish king, as God’s viceroy, was 
bound to punish idolatry, a Christian government has a right to suppress by 
force what it conceives to be religious error. When it can be shown that 
God has delivered to any Christian state a law prescribing the manner in 
which he is to be worshiped, and made that law part of the civil constitution 
of the state, appointing the magistrate his deputy to execute its provisions, 
the argument from Jewish polity may stand; but not until then.” (Litton, 
“The Church of Christ,” p. 92, n.) 


The Conciliar Idea 401 


death—for real or supposed religious offenses. Inevitably it led 
to religious persecution. And here was one element of unwis- 
dom which brought forth a plentiful harvest of like nature, as 
always, with the seed sown, in the Calvinian polity. It was not 
wholly impatience or bitterness in John Milton to describe the 
dominant presbyters of his time as “new forcers of the con- 
science.” 

The Church of Geneva became a model, in its main features, 
for most of the Protestant churches of the age. On the Con- 
tinent, in Great Britain, in the United States—in all the Re- 
formed’ and the Presbyterian Churches—it has been followed, 
not however without various adaptive changes, unto the present 
day. 

Calvinism even won its way, under the Protectorate, a hun- 
dred years after its organization in Geneva, to supremacy in the 
English Church. While its doctrines found embodiment in the 
Westminster Confession (they were already, moderately ex- 
pressed, in the Thirty-Nine Articles), its polity was established 
by Parliament; and thus it became for a time the dominant form 
of ecclesiastical government. 


2. ForMs OF AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN POLITY. 


But more particularly, what is Presbyterian government at the 
present time? Taking “the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States” (Southern General Assembly) as the type, let us make 
note of some of its more important features. 


The ordinary and permanent officers of the Church, by whom its whole 
government is administered, are ministers of the gospel, ruling elders, and 
deacons. 

‘There is no gradation of orders in the ministry: the one ministerial or- 
dination confers exactly the same authority upon all its recipients—namely, 
to preach, to administer the sacraments, to pronounce the benediction, and 
to ordain. 


1Out of the Reformed Churches of Europe have arisen, through migration, 
the “Reformed [Dutch] Church in the United States” and the “Reformed 
[German] Church in America.” Their government is Presbyterial, 


26 


402° -- Christianity as Organized 


License to preach is given by the Presbytery, after a literary and theo- 
logical examination, and the licentiate becomes thus a probationer for the 
ministry. On the acceptance of a call to the pastorship of a congregation, 
he is ordained. 

Conjointly with the minister, who is termed a teaching elder, the ruling 
elders are the rulers of each local church. They are elected by the people, 
and ordained by the pastor with the laying on of the hands of the Session. 
Their number is determined by each congregation for itself. The office is 
not for a prescribed time, but perpetual.* 

Deacons have the management of the temporal affairs of the church, and 
especially the care of the poor. They take no part in government, nor in the 
administration of the Lord’s Supper. Like the ruling elders, they are elected 
by the people and ordained by the pastor with the laying on of the hands of 
the Session, and they hold their office for life. But both elders and deacons 
may be deposed for heresy, immorality, or unacceptableness, by the Session. 

Both elders and deacons must signify their acceptance of the doctrinal 
standards of the Church, which are the Westminster Confession and the 
Catechisms—though this is not required of communicants—and their ap- 
proval of its government and discipline. 

The governing bodies, or courts, are four in number—namely, the Session, 
the Presbytery, the Synod, the General Assembly. 

The Session is the congregational court. It is composed of the pastor, 
who is ex officio its moderator, and the ruling elders. In case of a tie, the 
moderator has the casting vote. A meeting of the Session may be called at 
any time by the pastor, and must be called when requested by any two ruling 
elders or ordered by the Presbytery. Or, during a vacancy in the pastorate, 
it may be called by any two ruling elders. 

The Session has original jurisdiction over church members. By its vote 
only can members be received into the church, suspended, dismissed, excom- 
municated, or restored. It must devise and execute plans for the prosperity 
of the church. It may conduct a sessional visitation of the membership; it 
has general charge of public worship and of Sunday-school and missionary 
work; it may call congregational meetings—for example, for the election of 
a pastor—over which the moderator shall preside. 

The next higher court to the session is the Presbytery. It is composed of 
all the ministers, either with or without pastoral charges, and one ruling 
elder, within a certain prescribed territory. The elders are appointed by the 
various sessions. If a congregation have more than one pastor, it is entitled 
to be represented in presbytery by a corresponding number of ruling elders; 
and, on the other hand, if two or more congregations have but a single pastor, 
the united congregations are represented by a single ruling elder—the design 
being to make the number of ministers and of ruling elders equal. 

A call to a pastoral charge is offered by the whole congregation convened 


1The Northern General Assembly has authorized the election of elders 
for a term of years—instituting thus the “rotary eldership,” 


~~ 


The Conciliar Idea 403 


for the purpose. Such a call must be sent to the Presbytery, and placed by 
the presbytery in the hands of the minister or the probationer to whom it is 
addressed. If he accept it, the Presbytery, after a confession of his faith shall 
have been made in the presence of the congregation that has called him, and 
mutual pledges given by himself and the people, shall ordain him, if he be a 
probationer, by the laying on of their hands, and install him as pastor; or, 
if already ordained, he shall be simply installed. The dissolving of a pastoral 
relation must also be done by the Presbytery, and may be done at the re- 
quest of either the pastor or the congregation. 

In the case of ministers, the Presbytery is the court of original jurisdic- 
tion, and may suspend, depose, or excommunicate them. Some of its other 
powers are to organize new churches, to unite or divide existing churches, 
and to report the state of religion within bounds to the Synod and the 
General Assembly, year by year. Its stated meetings are semiannual. 

Above the Presbytery is the Synod. It consists of all the ministers and one 
ruling elder from each church within its territory, which must comprise at 
least three presbyteries. 

The Synod has no original jurisdiction over either church members, ruling 
elders, or ministers. It unites or divides presbyteries, or forms new ones, 
as occasion may demand, and exercises a general superintendence over the 
two lower courts and the congregations. 

The highest in this series of judicatories is the General Assembly. It is made 
up of commissioners, who must be ministers and ruling elders in equal numbers, 
chosen, according to a certain ratio of representation, by the presbyteries. 

The General Assembly gives advice and instruction in cases referred to it 
for such purposes, acts as the agent of correspondence with other Christian 
denominations, determines the formation and boundaries of synods, decides 
controversies concerning doctrine and discipline, and “constitutes the bond 
of unity, peace, and correspondence among all its congregations and courts.* 


This ecclesiastical system, then, is that of a unified representa- 
tive government by teaching and ruling elders. From Session 
to General Assembly, elders only are appointed to rule. Of these, 
the lay elders (ruling elders) of the Session are elected by the 
congregation; and after that, the people have no voice whatever 
in the government, whether in Session, Presbytery, Synod, or 
General Assembly. 

The governing bodies—Session, Presbytery, Synod, General As- 
sembly—are called courts on the ground that Christ is the one 
lawgiver of the Church; that his laws are set down in Holy Scrip- 


*Book of Church Order in the Presbyterian Church of the United States; 
Hodge, “What Is Presbyterian Law?” 


404 Christianity as Organized 


ture; that the authority of governing bodies, accordingly, is lim- 
ited to the interpretation and application of these laws, and to 
making such special regulations as are conformable to them. It 
is ‘ministerial and declarative” only. 

Not, indeed, that the whole form of government for the 
Church is presented in the Scriptures, so that no office or organi- 
zation may lawfully be created except such as are there pre- 
scribed. This extreme view, though advocated by some, is plain- 
ly impracticable, and has never gained wide acceptance.’ But 
there are certain fundamental principles of church polity, it is 
believed, that are authoritatively taught in the Scriptures, and 
must therefore be followed. 

These principles are (1) the parity of the ministry, (2) the 
right of the people to a part in the government, and (3) the unity 
of the Church through the subjection of a part to the whole. 
These three ideas in combination, accepted as New Testament 
principles—as the three great lines of church construction traced 
by the Divine Architect—are distinctive of Presbyterianism. 


3. SOME SIGNIFICANT PRESBYTERIAN BELIEFs. 


It may not be amiss also to mark with a note of emphasis some 
of the more significant beliefs that have taken form in connection 
with the fundamental Presbyterian idea. 

(1) The identity of the Church under the Old and the New 
Covenant. In the household of Abraham ecclesiastical organi- 
zation began, “with the bond of a covenant and the seal of a 
sacrament ;”’ and through the elders of Israel it was passed on to 
the Christian presbyterate, in which it shall be perpetuated unto 
the end of time. “Catholic and universal under the gospel (not 
confined to one nation as before under the law),” the Church, 
though existing in divers imperfect forms, is, through both dis- 
pensations and all ages, one and the same.” 


See p. 536. 

*This idea is implied in several phrases of the Confession of Faith, and is 
unequivocally set forth by Presbyterian theologians. 

“The Christian Church is not to be contemplated as another [than that 
of the Patriarchal and the Hebraic era] and independent organization: such 


The Conciliar Idea 405 


Stressing this Old Testament truth so strongly, Presbyterian- 

ism is inclined to make the Old Testament Scriptures generally 
more prominent, both in its polity and in its teaching, than do 
the other evangelical churches. 
_ (2) Infant church membership. The ecclesiastical covenant 
made with Abraham included the children of every succeeding 
generation within its provisions; and the New Covenant, which 
is essentially like unto it, nowise “different in substance,’ does 
the same. Not the individual, but the family, which in its nature 
is organically one, offers the true unit of church membership. 
Accordingly the “visible Church” is described in the Confession 
of Faith as consisting of ‘‘all those throughout the world that 
profess the true religion, and of their children,” 

Infants of Christian parents, therefore, are entitled to baptism, 
the sign and seal of the divine covenant, and to the initial church 
membership into which it admits them. They are subjects of the 
nurture, watch-care, and discipline of the Church, and must be 
admitted to the full privileges of membership as soon as by the 


a conception severs at a stroke the vital ties which bind the Old Testament 
and the New into living unity, robs prophecy of all significance, and renders 
the Divine dealing with mankind prior to the incarnation an inexplicable 
mystery.” (Morris, “Theology of the Westminster Symbols,” p. 615.) 

And the presbyterate, believed to be “the ecclesiastical institute” of all 
ages, is taken as the external form and sign of this identity: “The unity of 
the Church, through all dispensations identical, needs a living institute as 
well as a canonical word to thread her form through all generations. None 
but the office of presbyter can do this. The patriarchal, the Levitical, the 
Christian, as chief, the Greek, the Latin, the Reformed, in lines of sub- 
division, have all thus far had the elder, of some name, as an integral factor 
of government in some degree, and the presumption is fair that the Angel 
of the covenant is with this office till the end of the world.’ (McGill, 
“Church Government,” p. 230.) 

*“Church membership is the birthright of all who are born of Christian 
parents. This Christian birthright is recognized and confirmed in the bap- 
tism of infants. We say ‘the baptism of infants,’ not ‘infant’ baptism; be- 
cause the latter phrase sanctions the popular error that there are two kinds 
of baptism, and that the ordinance of baptism as administered to infants is 
not in the full sense of the word a sacrament, but only a ceremony of con- 
secration.” (Van Dyke, “The Church: Her Ministry and Sacraments,” p, 


74.) 


406 Christianity as Organized 


grace of God they are enabled to make a personal profession of 
faith in Christ. 

(3) Courts in gradation. ‘The session may receive or ex- 
clude church members; the presbytery may unite or divide con- 
gregations; the synod, presbyteries; the general assembly, syn- 
ods. The records of the session are reviewed by the presbytery; 
those of the presbytery, by the synod; those of the synod, by the 
general assembly. The appeal of the session is to the presby- 
tery; that of the presbytery, to the synod; that of the synod, to 
the general assembly. 

If the decision of any one of the lower courts should prove 
unsatisfactory, there is a larger and higher to which the case 
may be submitted. The humblest lay member of the Church has 
the right of an appeal from an adverse decision of the session, 
through each successive court, up to the general assembly, the 
highest of all. 

Besides, by such an ascending series of judicatories, the one- 
ness of the body ecclesiastic is made actual and visible. Not only 
local congregations but one far-extended Church is organized, 
there being “the same power in every tribunal that is in any 
tribunal, whilst the power of the greater part is over the power 
of the smaller part.” 

(4) Catholicity. Presbyterian organization, it is held, though 
necessary to a formally perfect church, is not necessary to a true 
church. The various Presbyterian denominations, therefore, 
seek to live in practical and cordial fellowship with all other 
evangelical communions. Holding faith above form, and dis- 
criminating between essential and non-essential truths, they of- 
fer the hand of brotherly cooperation to any religious body 
whose heart is as their heart concerning Christ the King. 


4. ESTIMATE OF THE PRESBYTERIAN POLITY. 


Is the Presbyterian system one of ecclesiastical republicanism? 
Not if this word be permitted to bear its usual significance. For 
in republicanism the representative is elected for a limited time 
—a year or a term of years—and so may be changed to suit the 


The Conciliar Idea 407 


changing views and wishes of his constituency; but the elder- 
ship is for life." Calvin has said with reference to the State: 
“Indeed, if these three forms of government [monarchy, aris- 
tocracy, democracy] which are stated by philosophers, be consid- 
ered in themselves, I shall by no means deny that either aris- 
tocracy or a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, far excels 
all others.”* Was not the form of government which he con- 
structed for the Church a “mixture of aristocracy and democ- 
racy’ —with the former element largely predominating? 

The strength of the Presbyterian polity is in its conservatism. 
A representative conciliar government, it is neither greatly dif- 
fused nor greatly concentrated. It avoids extremes—escaping, 
in one direction, the instabilities of restless or unenlightened pop- 
ular feeling, and, in the opposite direction, the committal of large 
governmental power into the hands of a single officer, or even 
of an exclusively ministerial council. It provides what Isaac 
Taylor describes, though with some exaggeration, as “that nec- 
essary balance of powers, clerical and lay, apart from which the 
choice must always lie between hierarchical despotism or demo- 
cratic despotism; that is to say, between an unabated spiritual 
supremacy or impracticable and ungovernable popular caprice.” 
It is steady, strong, and stable.* 

But, like all other systems, Presbyterianism must pay the price 
of its advantages. Does it not miss the benefit of the people’s 
constant cooperation, on the one hand, and of the quickening 
and aggressive leadership of individual superintendency, on the 
other? Let it not die of respectability. 

One may reasonably believe that no other system of govern- 


*With the exception noted above, p. 402, n. *Institutes, IV., xx. 8. 

*“Modern Presbyterianism, which, take it for all in all, and through all 
its fields of labor, is undoubtedly one of the noblest and most fruitful forms 
of Christian organization. .°. . Regarded in general and in all its dimen- 
sions, as a Church organization, Presbyterianism is a masterpiece. 

“There is in the world no moral ascendency of any force or forces over 
national character and life equal to that of Presbyterianism in Scotland. 
The discipline its churches furnish for the nation is unequaled in its power 
and thoroughness.” (Rigg, “Church Organization,” pp. 124, 141, 142.) 


— 


408 Christianity as Organized 


ment would have so well suited the prevailing conditions at the 
time of the Reformation, as the Presbyterial. While setting its 
orderly senate of rulers and judges over against the hierarchy 
of Rome, it may be supposed to have committed both to presby- 
ters and to people as large responsibilities as they were ready to 
accept and discharge. It would hardly be maintained that con- 
gregational, or prelatic, or Methodist churches, for example, 
would have proved as timely. Nevertheless, it does not follow 
that this notably compact and symmetrical system is equally well 
suited to other and very different conditions. Therefore its wis- 
dom is shown in not refusing such modifications and additions— 
the “rotary eldership’” and the appointment of deaconesses, for 
example—as may be demanded by providential calls and oppor- 
tunities. 


Il, 
fae PPISCOPAL IDEA: PRELATIC, SUCCESSIONAL. 


In Congregationalism the Church is governed by local con- 
gregations, each legislating solely for itself—a pure democracy ; 
in Presbyterianism, by elders elected by the people—a modified 
form of representative, or republican, democracy; in Prelatic 
Episcopacy, by bishops, in whose election the people may or not 
take a part—an oligarchy or federation of monarchies. 

It is the fundamental principles of prelacy, that to the bishops 
of the Church has been intrusted, by Christ’s own ordinance, all 
governmental authority. Practically it may be found expedient 
that they associate with themselves other ministers, or even lay- 
men, in this governing office—and they ought to do what is ex- 
pedient; but primarily the right of rule inheres in them alone. 
The will of the bishop, officially declared, is the law of the 
Church. Accordingly, as a matter not of courtesy but of simple 
fact, this man is “Lord Bishop.” 

Now the simple episcopal office is a natural and easily justifi- 
able development. Its principle is no other than that of a strong 
executive. That it should have arisen in the Church is therefore 
not a matter of surprise. In its primitive form—that of the pas- 
torship of a single congregation—the office, as every one will 
agree, was inevitable. But its further extension was hardly less 
so. As congregations multiplied, the demand for unity of doc- 
trine, liturgy, and discipline would be enlarged, so as to call fora 
more general superintendence—the supervision of a single minis- 
ter over a number of associated churches. Because it is a per- 
son, not a body of persons, a leader and not a legislature, that 
best satisfies the demand for unity. Thus would arise the dio- 
cesan episcopate. 


“For in recent years there has been going on in our [the Congregational] 
polity a process of development which reminds one, by its inner and almost 
unconscious necessity, of the natural development of the Episcopate, as 


(409) 


410 Christiamty as Organized 


The prototype is found in the New Testament. The Apos- 
tles were itinerant general superintendents. Sent forth by their 
Lord as witnesses of his resurrection and as divinely illumined 
teachers of his gospel, they also exercised a fatherly care, more 
or less specific, over the congregations that were gathered here 
and there through their own and others’ ministry. It could hard- 
ly have been otherwise. “Besides those things that are without,” 
says the farthest-traveling evangelist of them all, “there is that 
which presses upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches.” We 
also find Paul associating others with him, tried and able men, 
as assistants in the work, and leaving them in this or that place— 
Timothy in Ephesus, Titus in Crete—to ordain elders, to regu- 
late teaching and discipline, to set things in order, in his own 
absence. 

Is it not reasonable, then, to suppose that subsequently to the 
ministry of the Apostles, the Christian churches, constantly in- 
creasing in number and subjected to various perils from with- 
out and within, should feel the need of some similar personal 
oversight? In a word, was the supervision of the churches a 
peculiar feature of the Apostolate, transient and inimitable—like 
that of bearing witness as men who had “seen the Lord,” or that 
of inspired interpretation of the facts of redemption—or was it 
a service that might be possible and appropriate in the ordinary 
circumstances of the Church? It was certainly the latter.” 


many historians agree in describing it, in the sub-apostolic Church.” (New- 
man Smyth, “Address to the Episcopal Clergy of Connecticut,” 1908.) 

“Many Presbyterians feel the inefficiency of the Presbytery very keenly, 
and are prepared to advance to the permanent moderator or superintendent. 
Why not call him bishop? The tendency in the Presbyterian Church is 
toward such a bishop, who will give the Presbytery an executive head and 
make it more efficient.” (C. A. Briggs, in “Church Reunion,” p. 49.) 

“It may confidently be affirmed that, where Christianity is not enfeebled 
by adverse influences, its visible organization will always tend to something 
of an episcopal form, however much the name of episcopacy may be repu- 
diated.” (Litton, “The Church of Christ,” p. 314.) 

1“Tn modern Congregationalism something of this work of oversight and 
ministerial appointment has been managed by the home missionary Super- 
intendents of the various states, generally with assistants working under them. 
. . . We might call them diocesan ‘apostles.’ Or, if you please, bishops, 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional Ail 


Let us not ignore, in the study of ecclesiastical origins, the 
analogy of Church and State. In all forms of civil government, 
whether crude or highly developed, whether autocratic or free— 
with no exceptions that need be noted—administrative officers 
appear whose functions correspond, in a true and distinct sense, 
to those of the episcopate in various Christian churches. They 
are needed; they come to be because they must be. It has been 
taught, indeed, that the Church, being a supernatural institution, 
is out of all such correspondence with the State, which is human 
and natural.” But the Church too is human and natural, as well 
as divine; and the resemblances on which the governmental anal- 
ogy rests are by no means factitious or superficial. 


1. THE APOSTOLIC AND THE SACERDOTAL IDEA OF BISHOPS. 


When, however, the question is asked, whether the rise and 
persistence of the episcopate be a regrettable course of events— 
whether it shall be regarded as development or excrescence—the 
answer will have to take cognizance of a certain obvious dis- 
tinction. It will have to recognize the distinction between the 
pure apostolic idea of general visitation or superintendence, and 
the accretions that have encumbered and corrupted it in later 
times. What accretions? Those that are represented by the 
claim to apostolic succession and sacerdotal power. The opinion, 
either hardened into a dogma or practically embodied in eccle- 
siastical canons, that from the days of the Apostles until now 
an unbroken line of ordinations to the episcopal office by the 
imposition of hands is necessary to the Church’s existence—to 
describe the rise and prevalence of this assumption as regrettable 
would be to use an extremely inadequate word. It has been 
“branding instead of beauty,’ not development but disaster. The 


presiding over a definite territory but with only a moral authority. 
Just what is to become of this moral episcopate in the next few years it is 
not possible to predict. The tendency seems to be to make the Superin- 
tendency an elective office, with a general supervision over all the churches, 
larger as well as smaller.” (Heermance, “Democracy in the Chureh,” pp. 
129, 130.) 

*McTyeire, “Catechism of Church Government,” p. 49. 


Ai2 Christianity as Organized 


difference between the episcopal idea as exemplified in the first 
age of the Church by the Apostle of the Gentiles or in modern 
Christianity by Francis Asbury, and that which was exempli- 
fied by a Leo the First or an Archbishop Laud, is the difference 
between a Christly pastoral care and the over-lordship of a quasi- 
sacramental authority. 

But the office itself cannot be fairly held responsible for the 
perversions which it has suffered. To believe in prayer is not to 
accept the fancy of incantation; to believe in the sacraments is 
not to accept baptismal regeneration or transubstantiation; to 
believe in the presbyterate is not to accept the priesthood; and in 
like manner to believe in the episcopate is not to accept ecclesi- 
astic monarchism? Why reject a great and resourceful office 
because of its abuses—throwing out the child with the bath? 
The wisdom of a modern Israel’s cry for a king—“that our king 
may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles’ —de- 
pends upon “the manner of the king that shall reign.” What 
claim will he make? with what power shall he be clothed ? 

The Reformers rejected apostolic succession. Denying the in- 
fallibility of both papal and conciliar decrees, and taking the New 
Testament as their final court of appeal, they gained such knowl- 
edge of the Church as made all autocratic or sacerdotal concep- 
tions of it impossible. As they understood Christianity, a church 
is a local congregation of Christ’s followers under the ministra- 
tion of his word and sacraments, acknowledging him as the only 
Lord and Saviour: the Church is the whole number of Christ’s 
followers under whatever diverse forms of organization. That 
in order to be a member of a Christian church one must receive 
the sacraments at the hands of a priest who had been ordained 
by a bishop whose own ordination might be traced back to the 
apostle Peter or some other of the Twelve, was no part of the 
Reformers’ faith. It was no part of the Christianity which they 
felt themselves called to proclaim and organize. It was not to 
them believable on any ground, whether of reason or history or 
New Testament teaching. Consequently they held themselves 
at liberty to retain or to discontinue the episcopal office, accord- 


4 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 413 


ing to their best judgment of the circumstances and needs of 
different communities. As a matter of fact, it was discontinued 
except in those countries—Denmark and Sweden, for instance— 
in which the king and not the Christian teachers and ministers 
took the leading part in the reorganization of the Church. 

German Lutheranism might have perpetuated in its churches 
the historic line of bishops and ordinations had it so desired; for 
as many as three Roman Catholic bishops were numbered among 
its adherents. But it set no value upon such a succession, and 
made no use of it. Calvin had no bishop appointed for little 
Geneva—unless indeed he himself, though a layman, be regardec 
as such an officer. Nor could he find any episcopacy in the New 
Testament except the ministerial oversight of the Apostles. He 
did, however, express the judgment that in large countries a 
good purpose might be served by the episcopal office; and similar 
views may be quoted from Beza and from Bucer. John Knox 
provided for bishops, or “superintendents,” ten in number, for 
the Church of Scotland.* But Calvin and Knox and the com- 
munions which they represented believed no more than did 
Luther in a tactual or sacerdotal line of bishops authorized un- 
der the hands of the Apostles to preside over the presbyters and 
govern the Church. 


2. Some Historic PECULIARITIES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 


The reorganization of the English Church was distinctly dif- 
ferent from that of any other. For here the Reformation was 
accompanied by a politico-ecclesiastic movement that had no vital 
connection with it. Henry VIII. was in no real sense a Prot- 
estant; but neither was he a loyal and peaceable Romanist. He 


4In the “First Book of Discipline” of the Scotch Kirk it is written con- 
cerning the Superintendents, who were to be subject to the General Assem- 
bly: “These men must not be suffered to live as your idle bishops have done 
heretofore, neither must they remain where gladly they would; but they must 
be preachers themselves, and such as may not make long residence in any 
place till their kirks be planted and provided of ministers or, at least, of 
readers.” (Briggs, “American Presbyterianism,”’ p. 41, n.) Cf. Brown, “Life 
of Knox,” Bk, IL, pp. 131, 132, 


414 Christianity as Organized 


must be sovereign of England and do his own pleasure in Church 
as well as in State, even though it should be necessary to set at 
defiance the authority of the bishop of Rome. The chief men 
of the kingdom seemed for the most part also favorable to the 
assertion of this independence of Rome. At all events they easily 
fell in with the will of the king; and accordingly through the 
action of Parliament the papal supremacy was renounced, and 
the king himself made supreme governor of the English Church. 

Now the relation of the bishops to the king was close and sig- 
nificant. It was the relation afterwards expressed with forceful 
extravagance in that curt maxim (the “war cry” of the Stuarts) : 
“No bishops, no king.” As rulers of the national Church under 
its royal headship, they must be faithful supporters of the Crown, 
while the sovereign on his part vouchsafed them the security of 
his favor and protection. Besides, when people are accustomed 
to the episcopal monarchy in the Church, they will take more 
kindly and naturally to monarchy in the State. The English 
bishop, then, must not be displaced. So the reformed doctrines, 
which had already begun to make headway in the kingdom, found 
the episcopacy firmly established, a national as well as an eccle- 
siastic institution; and as they found it so they suffered it to re- 
main. 

The ordering of the English Church at the Reformation, like 
much other English legislating, was in the way of compromise. 
This would naturally prove favorable to freedom of thought and 
speech ; and as a matter of fact there is great freedom of speech 
enjoyed in this Church on all questions, religious, theological, 


1“Sith, therefore, by the fathers and first founders of this commonwealth 
it hath, upon great experience and forecast, been judged most for the good 
of all sorts, that as the whole body politic in which we live should be for 
strength’s sake a threefold cable, consisting of the king as supreme head 
over all, of peers and nobles under him, and of the people under them; so 
likewise that in this conjunction of states the second wreath of that cable 
should, for important respects, consist as well of lords spiritual as temporal. 
Nobility and prelacy being by this means twined together, how can it pos- 
sibly be avoided but that the tearing away of the one must needs exceedingly 
weaken the other, and by consequence impair greatly the good of all?” 
(Hooker, “Ecc. Polity,” Bk. VII. sec. 18 (4). : 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional AI5 


and ecclesiastic. Accordingly different views are taught by its 
theologians, now as heretofore, with respect to the origin and 
proper authority of the episcopal office. 

It is not with these variant views of the ecclesiologists, how- 
ever, that we are just now concerned, but rather with the actually 
existent forms of the organization. Here, then, is to be found - 
an example of prelatic’ and successional episcopacy. That is to 
say, the bishops constitute the supreme order in the ministry, 
choosing men for ordination to the inferior orders, exercising 
jurisdiction over them, and so interpreting their own prerogatives 
as to give no recognition to the ministry of any other commun- 
ion than those—namely, the Eastern, the Roman, and the Prot- 
estant Episcopal—which are regarded as standing in the apos- 
tolic succession. 

It is true that for a number of years after the renunciation of 
papal supremacy the dogma of the divine right of bishops was 
not emphasized in the Church of England; and it is a historic 
fact that during this period certain men without episcopal or- 
dination were received into its ministry.” But it must be grant- 
ed that this does not seem to have been in keeping with its law 
as contained in the Preface of the Ordinal. The opening sen- 
tence of this Preface, indeed, which is the same as when first 
adopted (in 1549), presents no bar to non-episcopal ordinations. 
It reads as follows: “It is evident unto all men diligently read- 
ing the Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apos- 
tles’ time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s 
Church—Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.” Now in this carefully 
worded assertion there is claimed for the three designated orders 


*Is it necessary to say that the word prelatic is here used in no offensive 
sense? Dean Armitage Robinson has spoken of the office of bishop in the 
Church of England as “an episcopacy which has long since ceased to be a 
prelacy” (“The Vision of Unity,’ p. 13). What he has in mind, I suppose, 
is the reasonable and brotherly spirit in which the bishops govern their dio- 
ceses, rather than the theory of episcopal authority which is prevalent in the 
English Church. Such a spirit is also characteristic, we may believe, of the 
bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 

*See p. 270, 


416 Christianity as Organized 


of the ministry only primitiveness, not the exclusive right of 
ministration in the Church. But the same is not true of the 
third sentence of the Preface. In this sentence, as it appeared in 
the Preface of 1549, was the following: “It is requisite that no 
man (not being at this present Bishop, Priest, or Deacon) shall 
execute any of them [ministerial functions], except he be called, 
tried and examined, and admitted, according to the form here- 
after following.” This would seem to mean that those who were 
already bishops, priests, or deacons, having been ordained in the 
Church of Rome or in the Church of England after its severance 
from Rome (in 1534), should have their orders recognized, and 
be permitted to exercise ministerial functions in the Church of 
England; but that all others must be ordained by a bishop ac- 
cording to the form of ordination following. 

Why is it, then, that all others were not thus ordained? It has 
been said, “Because of the exuberance of charity for the Re- 
formed communions of the Continent,” or “Because of lax ad- 
ministration of the law and conniving at offenses.” However 
this may be, it seems historically certain that the trend of both 
teaching and administration in the Church took no account 
of the law as formulated in the Preface of the Ordinal, and 
that the contrary teaching when it began, under Bishops Ban- 
croft and Laud, was at first the work of a small party. But it 
was the work of a very bold party, and finally proved trium- 
phant—and disastrous to Church and State." As Lord Bacon 
has said concerning it: “The beginnings were modest, but the 
extremes were violent.’”’ It may also be remembered in this con- 
nection that in the Church of England there has been from the 
first an uncommon amount of compromise and of inconsistency — 
between the letter of the law and the practice of its subjects and 
administrators. 


“The system pursued by Bancroft and his imitators, Bishops Neile and — 
Laud, . . . was just such as low-born and little-minded men, raised to 
power by fortune’s caprice, are ever fond to pursue. . . . They began 
preaching the divine right, as it is called, or absolute indispensability, of epis- — 
copacy; a doctrine of which the first traces, as I apprehend, are found about — 


f 
| 
} 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional A417 


To return for a moment to the third sentence of the Preface. 
In the year 1662 this sentence was changed by act of Parliament 
to that which has ever since been retained, as follows: “No man 
shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or 
Deacon in the Church of England, or suffered to execute any of 
the said functions, except he be called, tried, and examined, and 
admitted thereto, according to the form hereafter following, or 
hath had former episcopal consecration or ordination.” Here 
the phrase “not being at this present bishop, priest, or deacon” 
(which of course was no longer appropriate) was substituted by 
the more explicit language, “or hath had former episcopal con- 
secration or ordination.’’ This phrase, like its predecessor, cer- 
tainly left no place in the conduct of the public offices of the 
English Church for ministers with, for example, presbyterial or- 
dination. And in strict accordance with this interpretation of it 
has been the practice of this Church for the last three hundred 
years. Thus has the sturdy English Establishment, once in fra- 
ternal relations with the great body of evangelic ecclesiasticism, 
been sundered from it— 


A dreary sea now flows between. 


the end of Elizabeth’s reign. They insisted on the necessity of episcopal suc- 
cession regularly derived from the Apostles. . . . And as this affected all 
the Reformed Churches in Europe except their own, . . . they began to 
speak of them not as brethren of the same faith, united in the same cause, 
and distinguished only by differences little more material than those of 
political commonwealths (which had been the language of the Church of 
England ever since the Reformation, but as aliens, to whom they were not 
at all related, and as schismatics with whom they held no communion; nay, 
as wanting the very essence of a Christian society.” (Hallam, ‘“Constitu- 
tional History of England,” Vol. L., ch. vii., pp. 387, 388.) 

*The First Prayer Book of King Edward VI. (London, recent reprint) ; 
“The Anglican Ordinal,” Annotated by Bloomfield Jackson, M.A., pp. 17, 18. 

It was this same Parliament that, in an Act of Uniformity, forbade any 
person to “presume to consecrate and administer the holy sacrament of the 
Lord’s Supper, before he be ordained a priest by Episcopal consecration, on 
pain of forfeiture for every offense of one hundred pounds.” (Neal, “History 
of the Puritans,” Vol. II., p. 240.) 


27 


418 Christianity as Organized 


3. AFFINITY OF APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION AND SACERDOTALISM. 


Now the dogma of apostolic succession is closely affiliated with 
sacerdotalism. One might imagine either of them as existing 
without the other; but historically they go together. And there 
is a reason for it in the two dogmas themselves. Because it 
may well be asked, Why the absolute necessity for this un- 
broken line of the laying on of hands? Is it a mere formal con- 
tinuity? On the contrary, must it not, as its justifying expla- 
nation, convey some special grace to its recipient? And what is 
this grace which is given under the bishop’s hands in ordination, 
if not the grace of priesthood? What does it empower the or- 
dinand to do, if not to offer sacrifice, and in his turn to im- 
part a sacramental grace to communicants at the Lord’s Sup- 
per? So the two ideas united, and the two forms fitted to- 
gether. 

Accordingly we find that in entire accord with the general 
favor shown by the Church of England, in the Preface of the 
Ordinal, to the dogma of the apostolic succession, is its distinct 
and specific favorableness, in the Ordinal and Offices, to sacer- 
dotalism. For the second order of the ministry is here a “priest- 
hood,” the presbyter a “‘priest.” ‘Whether we call it a priest- 
hood, a presbytership, or a ministry, it skilleth not,” says Richard 
Hooker, “although in truth the word presbyter doth seem more 
fit and in propriety of speech more agreeable than priest with 
the drift of the gospel. . . . The Holy Ghost throughout 
the body of the New Testament making mention of them [min- 
isters] doth not anywhere call them priests.” But to many min- 
isters of the Church of England—as many as a third of the 
whole number, probably—their ministry is conceived of and prac- 
ticed as a priesthood. They profess to be, in the literal sense of 

1“Vou may follow the track of the Reformation, and mark how all the 
churches which took part in that movement, save only the Church of England 
and a possible fraction of Scandinavian Christendom, forfeited with the epis- 
copate the organic conditions of true sacramental life.” (Canon Liddon, © 


Sermon on Apostolic Labors, in “Clerical Life and Work,” p, 276. Ch 
Gore, “Mission of the Church,” Lect. I.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 419 


the word, priests. Not the ministration of God’s word, but the 
offering of sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper and the mediation of 
sacramental grace to the people, they regard as the most sig- 
nificant features of their calling. This, they insist, is the article 
of the standing or falling Church; this is what makes a church— 
the priesthood. And it is for this that a bishop lineally descended 
from the Apostles is necessary—he alone can confer priestly or- 
ders. No Church without a priesthood, no priesthood without 
episcopal ordination, no episcopal ordination without “apostolic 
succession.” <A line of bishops would be comparatively a small 
matter were it not that without it there could be no line of 
priests.” 

Let it be admitted, then, that just as evangelicalism rather 
than sacerdotalism is in accord with the Articles of Religion, so 
sacerdotalism rather than evangelicalism is in accord with the 
Offices and the Ordinal. But it is undoubtedly a strangely in- 
congruous outcome: a man claiming to be known as a successor 
of the Apostles, and yet bearing the name of priest, which no 
Apostle, even with Judaism just passing into Christianity, ever 
bore, and standing to minister at an altar of sacrifice, where 
no Apostle ever stood. 


4. ForMs OF GOVERNMENT IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 


This national church, as authorized and established by law, is 
a clergy-church. The laity as such have no part, either directly 
or through representation, in its government, and almost none 
in its work. To borrow the language of civics, they are subjects, 


*The Living Church, in a recent editorial utterance, states the case very 
plainly in connection with a question of Church union: “Thus the real issue 
is not over the ‘historic episcopate’ but over the historic priesthood. 

Only a Church with Bishops can secure priests; but unless a Church wants 
priests, it might better steer clear of Bishops. The ultimate question be- 
tween Churchmen and Protestants turns upon the priesthood.” 

“Tf the Bishop is lowered [by the Puritans], it is because he is the source 
of the Priesthood. If the Sacraments are disparaged, it is to sap the very 
foundation of things sacramental, which derive their being from the office 
of the Priest.” (Arthur Lowndes, in “Church Reunion,” p. 310.) 


420 Christianity as Organized 


not citizens." Neither has the congregation any voice in the se- 
lection of its ministers. Pastoral charges are “livings” held by 
patrons, more than half of whom are private persons, who nom- 
inate the pastors, subject to the approval of the diocesan bishop. 
No roll of membership is kept in the churches; and it seems 
difficult to determine who are properly church-members, wheth- 
er all baptized persons, all who have been confirmed, or all com- 
municants. All baptized persons in the land are claimed as 
rightfully under the care and government of the Church, though 
probably more than half of them are affiliated with other Chris- 
tian communions. There is no moral discipline—‘“practically — 
none for ministers, confessedly none for private members.” 


The bishops of the twenty-four senior sees have seats in the Upper House 
of Parliament as spiritual lords—the Archbishop of Canterbury ranking as 
the first peer of the realm. A cathedral (or bishop’s) church is governed — 
by a chapter consisting of a dean and (usually four) canons. It is by the 
cathedral chapter nominally that the bishop is elected, on nomination of the 
Crown. But permission is not given to elect any other than the royal nom- 
inee, and if he be not elected in twelve days the Crown appoints; so that the 
nomination is final and the election by the chapter meaningless—a mechan- 


“Ffereupon we hold that God’s Clergy are a State which hath been and 
will be, as long as there is a Church upon earth, necessarily by the plain 
word of God himself; a State whereunto the rest of God’s people must be 
subject, as touching things that appertain to their souls’ health.” (Hooker, 
“Ecc. Polity,” Bk. III., sec. 11, pp. 333, 334.) 

“The laity, left without work, have almost of necessity remained without 
zeal.” (Westcott, “Social Aspects of Christianity,” p. 79.) 

2“The cessation of indulgences among us [in the Church of England] is 
simply coextensive with the cessation of that godly discipline which must 
exist in every well-ordered church.” (Blunt, “Dictionary of Doctrinal and 
Historical Theology,” Art. “Indulgences.”) 

If no other reason could be given for the lack of discipline, the existing 
relation between Church and State would be sufficient: “But the cause of the 
decay of moral discipline in our own Church has been a different one—the 
peculiar relation in which the Church stands to the State. . . . What 
right had the Church to hamper her liberty to express and enforce by moral 
discipline on her own members the unchanging law of Christ? . . . No- 
Christian society can be healthy unless there is some obvious means by 
which those acting in open defiance of Christian law shall forfeit, not the 
privileges of citizenship, but the privileges of Christian communion.” (Gore, 
“The Mission of the Church,” pp. 93, 95, 97.) 


a 


: 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 421 


ical bow to ecclesiastic antiquity. As to who the appointee shall be, it would 
seem to depend somewhat upon which political party chances to be in power 


at the time. Bishops, moreover, are compelled under severe legal penalties 


to ordain the nominee thus brought before them.* 

Bishops are assisted in the visitation of parishes and in the government 
of the diocese by archdeacons and rural deans. 

There is a series of ecclesiastical tribunals, the highest court of appeals 
being the sovereign himself in council. 

The two legislative bodies of the Church are the Convocations of Can- 
terbury and York. Each of these bodies consists of two houses, an Upper 
and a Lower—the Upper House being made up of the diocesan bishops, 
presided over by the archbishop, and the Lower House of archdeacons, deans, 
and representatives of the lower clergy. These convocations can be convened 
only under the authority of a writ from the Crown; and their decisions be- 
come law only when confirmed by act of Parliament. The Archbishop of 
Canterbury is the titular head of the Church, but nothing more; its real head 
is the King of England. 

The national Parliament, indeed, is the highest law-making body of the 


Church. From which order of things it follows that, although laymen are 


‘ 


} 


+ 


excluded from all ecclesiastical councils, the Church itself is under their 
supreme control. Not only is the head of the Church, the sovereign of the 
tealm, a layman, but the members of the House of Parliament are, with the 
exception of the “spiritual lords,” either laymen or not churchmen at all. 
They represent Scotland and Ireland as well as England, and are not chosen 
—any more than are the senators and congressmen of the United States— 
with reference to ecclesiastical relations or religious faith, They may be 
Nonconformists, Roman Catholics, Jews, agnostics.” 


*This mode of episcopal appointment is strongly condemned by prominent 
English churchmen: “It is quite clear that in the primitive ages the voice of 
the lay people in the choice, and their ‘acclamation’ and assent in the ordi- 
nation of the clergy, whether bishops or priests, were by no means disre- 
garded. . . . It would seem to be alike a corruption of the primitive 
practice to confine such choice absolutely to the clergy, whether bishop or 


_ pope, or to let it fall altogether into the hands of a lay government.” 


(Moberly, “The Administration of the Holy Spirit,” p. 199.) 

“The Anglican Ordinal,” annotated by Bloomfield Jackson; Articles on 
the “Church of England” in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica, and the New International Encyclopedia. 

When religious tests were abolished, so that adherents of any religion or 


_ of none at all became eligible to seats in the national Parliament, a strange 
result followed. “Men whose distinctive note was dissent from the Church, 


were, by a constitutional change which enlarged and benefited the State, in- 


_ vested with legislative authority over the church they dissented from; and 


_men the Church could not truthfully recognize as fully or adequately Chris- 
tian became, by civil action and on civil grounds, lawgivers for the very 


422 Christianity as Organized 


Numerous benevolent institutions, such as hospitals, asylums, 
and homes for the poor, are generously maintained; and much 
evangelistic and social work among the poor is done by the 
Church Army—an institution which owes its origin to the nota- 
ble example of the Salvation Army of “General” William Booth. 


5. EXTENSION OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH TO AMERICA. 


The English Church has been extended to the Colonies of En- 
gland in all parts of the world. In our American Colonies it 
was planted at an early date of their history. In the oldest of 
them all, Church and State began together. For the fleet that 
brought the colonists, in 1607, to the rude riverside in the Vir- 
ginia wilderness, brought with them the Prayer Book and the 
Episcopal minister. The building of a house of worship and 
of the cabins of the people went on side by side; and a few weeks 
after the landing the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in the first 
church edifice—‘‘a pen of poles with a sail for a roof.’” 

In Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, 
and Georgia the English Church was established by law. The 
Colonies were included, during their whole history, in the dio- 
cese of the Bishop of London. But his oversight of them was 
a very “shadowy superintendency’’—in name only.” Never did 
they enjoy the benefit of an episcopal visitation. Hence there 


church that refused them recognition.” (Fairbairn, “Catholicism,” p. 
288. ) 

“The most sacred questions of doctrine and morals are not decided in the 
last resort by the commissioned guardians of the faith, but by accomplished 
lawyers, who may or may not be Christians. . . . We can indeed defend 
existing arrangements if we can suppose that St. Paul would have allowed 
the questions pending between him and the Galatian Judaizers, or the Corin- 
thian deniers of the Resurrection, to be settled by the nearest proconsul.” 
(Liddon, “Clerical Life and Work,” p. 304.) 

1Cooke, “Virginia,” p. 20. 

2It seems to have been a mere accidental circumstance that attached the 


Colonies to the see of London. “At the first settlement of the country the ~ 


then Bishop of London had chanced to be a stockholder and a member of 
council in the ‘Virignia Company.’ This fact gave him a vague, advisory 
oversight of its affairs. His successors for nearly a century followed his 
example until it became a prescriptive right of that see. Bishop Compton, 


ee ee eee 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 423 


were no ordinations to the ministry and no confirmations; and 
though the clergy’s need of discipline was imperative and noto- 
rious, none was exercised over them. In fact, the ecclesiastical 


_ situation was such as to make discipline an impossibility. 


Repeated efforts were made to have a bishop consecrated for 
the Colonies; but all in vain. “For a hundred and seventy-five 
years,” says Dr. S. D. McConnell, “the Church in America was 
a Japhet in search of a father. The chapter now before us is 
the story of the long, wearisome, pitiful, despairing effort to 


obtain that office without which the Church could not live.” Ob- 


viously either the apostolic idea of church organization, or the 
apostolic spirit of labor and self-devotion, or both, were lacking. 
“Friend and foe alike were possessed of the idea’—so we are 
told—‘‘that the office involved the trappings of worldly estate. 
All efforts to secure an American bishop involved efforts to se- 
cure for him an income of at least a thousand pounds, a large 
sum in those days.”* And in those same days it came to pass that 
Francis Asbury went his way throughout the wild Colonies, on 
horseback or otherwise, five thousand miles a year, infirm in 
health yet unremitting in episcopal labors, on an annual salary 
of “at least” eighty dollars. 

Nor was it simply the difficulty of providing the bishop’s “‘trap- 
pings of worldly estate” that stood in the way. The people, 
Episcopalians as well as others, were apprehensive lest, if a bish- 


in 1703, had it confirmed to him and his successors by an ‘Order in Council.’ 
But the supervision which the Bishop of London could give to churches 
farther away than the heart of Australia now is was worth but little.” 
(McConnell, “History of American Episcopal Church,” p. 175.) 

*The first Protestant Episcopal bishop, Dr. Samuel Seabury, was proba- 
bly, and the second, Dr. William White, was certainly never confirmed. 
Note that baptized persons could be admitted to the Lord’s Supper without 
confirmation, if they were “ready and desirous to be confirmed.” 

“These colonies [Virginia and Maryland particularly] became a refuge 
and resort for the thriftless and profligate clergy of England, who were 
glad to escape from their debts and difficulties at home, and whose friends 
were so happy to get rid of them that they aided in securing for them 
assured positions and salaries on the distant continent.” (Tiffany, “Hist. 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church,” pp. 266, 267.) 

8Tiffany, “History of the Episcopal Church,” pp. 277, 278. 


| 
424 Christianity as Organized 


op were appointed, Parliament might confer upon him such pow- — 
ers—that of holding bishops’ courts, for instance—as would in- 
fringe upon the liberties of the Colonies. 


6. ORGANIZATION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 


When the War of the Revolution was over, the Church of 
England had ceased to exist in the victorious federated Colonies. 
What did remain? Only a dispirited remnant of Episcopal con- 
gregations, with deserted parishes, dilapidated churches, apathet- 
ic or perplexed adherents, and no general government or bond of 
union. 

The movement for bringing the churches together into a gen- — 
eral organization was begun in 1782, the same year in which the 
preliminary treaty of peace between England and the United 
States was signed. For it was in that year that the rector of 
Christ Church, Philadelphia, Dr. William White (afterwards 
bishop), issued his pamphlet, “The Case of the Episcopal 
Churches in the United States Considered.” Dr. White was a 
believer in the expediency but not in the divine right of epis- 
copacy. He was troubled by no doubt that there could be “a 
church without a bishop.’ His position was that of Jewell, 
Hooker, Hoadly, Cranmer, Usher, and others—may we not say, © 
of the Church of England generally in their day?—as to the 
divine necessity of episcopal ordination." Accordingly the gist 
of the proposal made in his pamphlet was that a general con- 
vention be held, composed of representatives of the churches, — 
and a presbyter elected as permanent president, who, together — 
with certain other presbyters associated with him, should exer- 
cise the functions ordinarily performed by a bishop, including 
the function of ordination. This, however, was to be regarded — 
as only a temporary arrangement. The intention was to “pro-— 


“So late as 1830, in a letter to his dear friend and son in the gospel, — 
Bishop Hobart, . . . he remarks in a note: . . . ‘In regard to the 
episcopacy, I think that it should be sustained as the government of the © 
Church from the time of the Apostles, but without criminating the ministry 
of other churches, as is the course taken by the Church of England.” (Mc- — 
Connell, “American Episcopal Church,” pp. 293, 204.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 428 


cure the succession” as soon as this could conveniently be done. 
But the proposed plan of government met with opposition, 
especially in the North, and the acknowledgment by England of 


- American independence soon afterwards promised to open an- 


other way out of the difficulty. . 
Meantime meetings were held—consisting of a few ministers 
and laymen, or of ministers alone—for the purpose of delib- 
erating on the affairs of the Church, and effecting if possible the 
desired organization. But with the establishment of the na- 


- tional independence a new obstacle to the securing of an Amer- 


ican successional episcopate appeared: the English prelates were 
prohibited by law from consecrating a bishop without requiring 
of him an oath of allegiance to the British Crown—which, of 
course, was out of the question under what had now become a 
foreign government. 

This obstacle, however, was evaded; and not long afterwards 
it was removed. Dr. Samuel Seabury, an Episcopal pastor in 
the city of New York, evaded it. Having been selected for the 
episcopacy at a meeting of a few clergymen in Connecticut, he 
obtained consecration, in the fall of 1784, at the hands of cer- 
tain Scotch non-juring bishops at Aberdeen, Scotland; and he 
was accepted as bishop of Connecticut. Two and a half years 
afterwards, on February 4, 1787, the legal obstacle having in 
the meantime been removed by act of Parliament, two other 
American Episcopal clergymen, Dr. William White and Dr. 
Samuel Provoost, were consecrated by the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, in Lambeth Chapel, for an independent American Epis- 
copal Church. At a convention held in September, 17809, these 
three bishops were formally recognized, a Prayer Book adopted, 
a constitution and canons established; and thus the organization 
of this new religious body, the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
the United States of America, was completed. 


7. THE PROTESTANT EPIscOpPAL COMPARED WITH THE 
ENGLISH CHURCH. 


In form of government, especially with respect to the Church’s 
telation to the State and to the rights and responsibilities of the 


426 Christianity as Organized 


laity, there is a marked difference between the English and the 
Protestant Episcopal Church. As to relation to the State, neither 
the Episcopal nor any other ecclesiastical body could have put 
forth the effort to gain legal ‘‘establishment” in the United States — 
of America, with the slightest hope of success. Nor did any of 
the various churches make such an effort. Freedom in religion 
as well as in civil government was the spirit of the young Re- 
public of the West. Both rulers and people, whether Christians 
or unbelievers, were averse to all alliance of Church and State. 
And if the less worthy motive of denominational jealousy was 
ready to bring its pressure to bear in the same direction, it need 
not be wondered at. 

Also as to the rights and responsibilities of the laity, the or- 
ganizing convention of 1789 made a great step forward. For © 
in that convention the Church decided to admit the laity to a 
large share in its government. And this too was in accord with 
the ideas and spirit of the new democratic State under which 
its lot was cast—as well as with the ideas and spirit of primitive 
Christianity.’ 

Indeed, it is only in a mild sense of the word that the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church may be called prelatic. But it may be 
described as in government strictly “successional.” That is to 
say, in their attitude toward other churches, the American daugh- 
ter and the Anglican mother stand side by side. While both are 
willing to recognize “the Christians of other churches,” neither 
will give any recognition to “the churches of other Christians”’ 
—unless, indeed, these be Roman or Orthodox Eastern Chris- 
tians. Neither will invite ministers of other churches into its 
pulpits.” Only priests have received from Christ the grace which 


*“From government by bishops, themselves the creatures of the king, to 
government by a convention made up of popularly selected bishops, priests, 
and laymen, is a tremendous leap. When the convention is composed of 
men who had been born and reared and had their habits fixed under another — 
ecclesiastical system, the wonder at its success becomes still greater.” (Mc- 
Connell, “History of American Episcopal Church,” pp. 265, 266.) 

2Ts there an exception to this rule? At the Episcopal General Convention 
of 1907, canon 19 was amended as follows: “[Nothing herein shall be so 


i 


f 


| 
| 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 427 


enables men to impart grace in conducting the services—espe- 
cially absolution and the Lord’s Supper—of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church. No other could do it even if he should be per- 
mitted and should make the attempt. His performance would 
have no more effect than would the signature of any private per- 
son to an act of a state legislature." Any contemporaneous Prot- 
estant church is described in the Canons and in the denomina- 
tional literature as a “denomination” or “communion” or “other 
body of Christians’’ or “religious body” or “organized religious 
body” or “sect” or “company of Christians” or “separated breth- 
ren” or “organized association of believers” (the descriptive 
terms are numerous but carefully chosen), in contradistinction 
to “this Church” or “the Church” or “the American Church.” 


construed as] to prevent the Bishop of any Diocese or Missionary District 
from giving permission to Christian men, who are not ministers of this 
Church, to make addresses in the Church on special occasions.” This action 
was deplored by High Churchmen. A petition—in which ministers of other 
churches were referred to as “so-called Christian men’—signed by over 
eleven hundred presbyters of the Church, was presented to the Bishops, ask- 
ing that the amendment be rescinded or interpreted. But on the other hand 
this petition was adversely criticised by many of their brethren, and the 
language of the amendment itself was condemned as disrespectful to the 
ministry of other churches. “The amendment cast discredit on the ministry 
of all churches outside our communion by its use of the words: ‘Christian men 
who are not ministers of this Church.’ If the canon needed to be amended, 

. . it should have read: ‘Christian men and Christian ministers who are 
not ministers of this Church.” (The Churchman, November 28, 1908.) 

*“T cannot be charged with presumption or exclusiveness or narrowness or 
disrespect because I do not invite my brethren to attempt to do what I am 
persuaded they have no right to do if they could, and am satisfied they can- 
not do if they would. Would any one feel aggrieved if he were the guest of 
the Governor of the State, and was not asked to put his signature to par- 
dons, or Acts of the Legislature?” (The Right Rev. Franklin Seymour, in 
“Church Reunion,” p. 176.) 

The most serious exception I know is the reference in the Preface of 
the Protestant Episcopal Prayer Book to “the different religious denomina- 
tions of Christians in these States” organizing their “respective Churches”’— 
which looks as if it might be a relic of the work of Dr. White in the “Pro- 
posed Book” of 1785. “The various religious denominations in the country 
are dignified in the Prayer Book by the name of Churches.” (George 
Hodges, D.D., “The Episcopal Church,” p. 35.) But Dr. Hodges, though 
writing in a bright and brotherly spirit, does not so “dignify” them. 


428 Christianity as Organized 


The voices of the laymen are strong and influential in the church councils, 
No law can be enacted without their concurrence. ’ 

The ministry is constituted in the same three orders, and with substan- 
tially the same powers and duties, as in the Church of England. The canon- 
ical age for admission to the diaconate is twenty-one years; to the priest-— 
hood, twenty-four years; to the episcopate, thirty years. An interval of at 
least one year must intervene between ordination to the diaconate and to 
the priesthood. 

Laymen may be licensed by the bishop as lay-readers. They must not 
wear strictly clerical vestments or deliver sermons of their own composition, — 
but are authorized to minister to the congregation by conducting the service — 
according to the Prayer Book—with the omission of certain parts—and read- 
ing sermons prepared by approved ministers. But in vacant parishes it is not 
regarded as an undue extension of their office to deliver addresses or ex-_ 
hortations of their own. 

The bishop has jurisdiction over the clergy. Candidates for ordination — 
must be recommended by a majority of the vestry of the parish in which they 
hold their membership, to the Standing Committee of the diocese, and by the. 
Standing Committee to the bishop; and the bishop, after having subjected — 
them to certain prescribed examinations, may ordain them to the ministry. — 
With the bishop himself, however, rests the final decision of the case: he 
cannot be compelled to ordain. ; 

The clergy are amenable for both personal and official conduct to the 
bishop, whose duty it is to take continual oversight of them, to give good — 
counsel, and to require the discontinuance of wrong practices, as need may 
be. At the trial of a minister, the bishop presiding has the right to modify © 
an adverse verdict of the court. i 

Bishops are elected to their office by the Diocesan Convention, approved 
by the General Convention (or in the interval of the General Convention by 
the bishops and the Standing Committees of all the dioceses), and conse- — 
crated by not fewer than three bishops. A missionary bishop, however, is — 
nominated by the House of Bishops and elected by the House of Deputies. 

In every diocese a Standing Committee (in one or two dioceses composed | 
of presbyters only, in all the other dioceses of presbyters and laymen) is 
appointed annually by the Diocesan Convention, as an advisory council to 
the bishop. Its advice may be proffered without impropriety, whether asked — 
for or not; and in case of the diocese being temporarily deprived of the 
services of a bishop, because of absence, impaired health, or other cause, the — 
Standing Committee exercises the administrative authority. 

Each parish has a board of officers, the vestry, elected by the people (in © 
some parishes by communicants only, in others by communicants and con- 
tributors jointly), and charged with the administration of its temporal af- — 
fairs. They themselves need not be members of the church. 

The executive officers of the vestry are called wardens. 

A minister is elected to the pastorship of a church by the vestry. Notice 
of his election must be delivered to the bishop, who, if he see no imperative © 
reason to the contrary, will proceed to have him “instituted” as pastor. Here 


——eeeaeaaeaeEeEe— eee 


7 
{ 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 420 


again the final decision rests with the bishop, who may inhibit the institution 
of the pastor elect. But such episcopal interference with the will of the ves- 
try is not in accord with the temper and customs of the Church. 

At least once in three years an episcopal visitation must be made to each 


| church of the diocese, “for the purpose of examining the state of the church, 


inspecting the behavior of the clergy,” and administering the rite of con- 
firmation. Here again episcopal authority is supreme: the bishop may by 
administering the rite of confirmation receive the candidate into full member- 
ship in the Church, or may decline to do so. 

There is held an annual Diocesan Convention, of which the bishop of the 
diocese is the presiding officer, composed of the duly qualified ministers of 
the diocese, and lay delegates (one or more, according to the rule adopted 
by the particular diocese) from each parish, whose duty it is to regulate and 
administer the affairs of the Church within its bounds, under the authority 
of the bishop and the General Convention. In some dioceses delegates are 
elected by the vestry; in others, by the congregation. In many instances the 
lay members are in excess of the clerical members; but the vote on any 
question may be taken by orders, if even a very few desire it, and thus the 
undue influence of the laity upon legislation is guarded against. 

The legislative body of the Church is the General Convention. It consists 
of an Upper and a Lower House—namely, the House of Bishops and the 
House of Deputies. The House of Deputies is made up of clerical and lay 
members—four clergymen and four laymen from each diocese—elected by 
the Diocesan Conventions. The House of Bishops sits with closed doors. 
The concurrence of both houses is necessary to the passage of any measure. 
The Convention meets triennially. 

Some new features of polity, hardly as yet firmly established, are the arch- 
diaconate (for the development and oversight of home missions), the cathe- 
dral, and the provincial organization of dioceses. These three institutions 
are modeled after corresponding institutions of the English Establishment.* 


8. INSTITUTIONALISM IN THESE Two CHURCHES. 


we 


Both in England and in America the Episcopal Church em- 
bodies very conspicuously in its structure and administration the 
idea of institutionalism. Relatively it makes but little use of the 
subjective element in religion. For in that direction—so it uni- 
formly declares—are found morbid introspection, spiritual self- 
conceit, despondency, unregulated enthusiasm. True, the soul 
must be brought face to face with its Maker, in Him who died 
for its redemption. But the means by which this end may be 
attained is the continual operation of religious rites and obsery- 


“Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 1789-1907.” 


430 Christiamty as Organized 


ances. Only through the visible may we reach the unseen. The 
spirit must be clothed with a fitting and beautiful body. Hence 
the Church is perpetually proclaimed. There is much of the out 
ward in congregational worship. Elaborate, ornate, artistic, spec= 
tacular, it appeals strongly to the senses. The minister is a priest; 
the ministry, a hierarchy. Many “holy days” are observed. T e 
sacraments, clothed with a mystic and undefined virtue, are made 
very prominent. | 
Nor can there be a moment’s doubt of the value of institutional 
observances in religion. But on the other hand, as in literature 
too many words, and all the more if they be attractive words 
obscures the sense, and as in music too great display of voice is 
fatal to the sentiment of the song, so does undue religious cere 
monial keep back the worshiper’s mind from the supersensuous 
reality. It tends to stupefy rather than to quicken or to calm. 
Neither, on the other hand, can there be a reasonable doubt 
that religion may become relatively too subjective, and thus in- 
cur the risk of morbid excesses. But the more common and 
powerful drift is in the opposite direction. Quietism is possible 
—and rare; but ever-present is the peril of externalism.’ 
Far more serious than the mere multiplication of forms is the 
case of religious rites taken and practiced as embodying anti= 
Christian ideas. Such, unless sacerdotalism be indeed the reli- 
gion of the New Testament, are the ritualistic, or sacramenta 
rian, rites. The ritualistic congregation cherishes much medieval 
symbolism, revives many medieval practices, and, as in Roma 
ism, centers the whole ministration of the Church about an altar 
on which is consecrated a sacrifice to be partaken of by the com- 


1The drift in this direction may be seen in such recorded facts as the fol 
lowing: “When Chase reached the new land of Ohio, in 1817, it seemed nat 
ural for him to begin his work at ‘Covenant Creek’ by calling together his 
neighbors for the preaching of the Word and the Prayers. When Breck and 
his companions laid down their packs under an elm tree in Minnesota, in 
1850, it seemed equally natural and fitting to them to ‘erect a rustic cross, 
build a rude altar of rough stones, and begin their work by the celebration 
of the Eucharistic Feast”” (McConnell, “Hist. of American Episcopal 
Church,” p. 323.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 431 


municants, as the chief divinely appointed channel of saving 
grace. 

The consecrated bread and wine, it is taught, are the ‘‘vessel’’ 
or “veil” or “garment” of the real body and blood of Christ, 
which is the sacrifice offered. Any man who undertakes to offer 
this sacrifice without a commission from a bishop of “‘apostolical 
descent” is a follower of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and ex- 
posed to a corresponding punishment. Baptism—which may be 
given even by laymen, in exceptional cases—conveys to the soul 
justification and the new birth.” As to non-episcopal Christian 
communions, they “have cut themselves off from the participa- 
tion of the one Spirit as living in the Church and flowing through 
the sacraments, which are veins and arteries of the one body.”” 


g. ISOLATION oF THESE Two CHURCHES. 


The Anglican and the Protestant Episcopal Churches are not in 
fraternal relations with any other. Refused recognition by the 
Greek and Roman communions with which they would fain fra- 
ternize, they themselves refuse to acknowledge the Protestant 
Churches by which they are surrounded as in the unity of the 
Church of Christ. “From that moment” (when the renewed 
Act of Uniformity was passed, 1662), says Green the historian, 
the Church of England stood “isolated and alone among the 
churches of the world.’” 


*“It [baptism] is the passage out of a state of wrath into a state of grace, 
and carries with it forgiveness of sins, purchased for us by the Blood of 
Christ, and all other blessings of the Christian covenant.” (Goulbourn, “The 
Holy Catholic Church,” p. 136.) 

*Tt is not a question whether we can give up all symbolism in religion; 
the only question is, how the Church can use religious symbolism without 
abusing it. The symbol is not in itself an evil thing, whether it be a light 
before an altar, a silver star in the Chapel of the Nativity at Bethlehem, or 
a statue of Luther kissing the open Bible, or a flower before a pulpit. 

It is only when the symbol is made an idol that the truth is betrayed.” (New- 
man Smyth, “Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism,” pp. 186, 187.) 

“The Reformation had severed it irretrievably from those who still 
clung to the obedience of the Papacy. By its rejection of all but Episcopal 
orders the Act of Uniformity severed it as irretrievably from the general 
body of the Protestant Churches whether Lutheran or Reformed. And 


432 Christianity as Organized 


Attempts have been made by English Churchmen to open the 
way to the recognition of their communion as a true Church of 
Christ by the Orthodox Eastern Church.’ But all has thus far 
been unavailing. The Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Ori- 
ental Church has always been ready with the answer to any such 
suggestions, Unless you hold the Orthodox Faith (which, in 
fact, you do not), it is vain to ask our recognition or fellowship. 

A similar attempt was made by prominent members of the 
Church of England, less than fifteen years ago, to obtain from 
the Pope an official declaration of the validity of Anglican or- 
ders.” Even so great and wise a statesman as William Ewart 
Gladstone thought it worth while to write a letter containing an 
able argument on the subject to Cardinal Rampolla, and was 
strangely sanguine enough to hope for a favorable result from 
the united undertaking. But the reply of Leo XIII., in the Bull 
Apostolice Cure (September 13, 1896), was a death-blow to 
all such hopes. The Pope refused to recognize any ordination 
by English bishops—the main ground of his decision, to state 
it with the utmost brevity, being that the Anglican rite of ordi- 


while thus cut off from all hearty religious communion with the world with- 
out it sank into immobility within.” (“History of the English People,” Vol. 
PEL; 3635) 

*For example, in the latter part of the reign of Peter the Great, and a 
hundred years later by certain English Tractarians. Of wider significance 
was the Conference of Bonn (1874), of which Dean Howson and Canon 
Liddon were members. The Conference was composed of Old Catholics, 
Anglicans, Russian and Eastern Orthodox Christians, and American Epis- 
copalians. Its object was to secure inter-communion for the churches (in- 
formally) represented. (See Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom,” Vol. II., 
p. 545.) 

“Teo XIII. was approached by those who claimed to speak, if not for 
the entire Anglican body, at least for a numerous section of its members. 
They assured him that there was a widespread opinion among you that our 
practice of reordaining convert clergymen was an imputation on your Church 
which had not originated in any due inquiry, but rested on historical assump- 
tions which could no longer be sustained. They told him they felt strongly 
on the matter, in the belief that you were being treated with a manifest dis- 
regard for truth and justice; and they urged that the effect was to nourish 
prejudices against the Holy See most injurious to the cause of Christian re- 
union.” (“Vindication of the Bull Apostolicae Cure,” p. 5.) 


| 
: 


ee 


a 


The Episcopal Idea: Prelatic, Successional 433 


nation to the priesthood does not “intend” to confer, and hence 
cannot possibly confer, the power to offer sacrifice. All, there- 
fore, was null and void. The Anglican body’s sacraments were 
no sacraments, their ministry no ministry, they themselves no 
Church of Christ.” 

On the other hand, these same two Episcopal churches of En- 
gland and America have, through their Bishops’ Chicago-Lam- 
beth Declaration, proposed fraternity and even organic union 
with other Protestant churches.” The Christian spirit in which 
it was done evoked, as was meet, a sympathetic response. But 
the proposal requires, as one of the four conditions, that only 
their own ordination to the Christian ministry shall be regarded 
as valid.” It could not reasonably have hoped to be accepted. 

Here, then, in this offer of a via media, appears the unwilling 
maintenance of a somewhat singular ecclesiastic isolation." May 


*The Archbishops of Canterbury and York replied to the Papal Bull—re- 
ferring to the Church of Rome as a “sister Church of Christ.’ The Roman 
Archbishop and Bishops in England wrote in vindication of the Bull—re- 
ferring to the Church of England as “your communion,” “the Anglican 
body,” or one of “the separated communities.” 

?The Articles of Unity were adopted by the House of Bishops in Chicago, 
1886; in London, at Lambeth Palace, with slight modifications, 1888; by the 
Episcopal General Convention, 1892. 

®This condition, or Fourth Article of Unity, is phrased as follows: “The 
acceptance of the historic episcopate locally adapted in the methods of its 
administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of 
God into the unity of his Church.” 

“To approach the great Protestant churches of the world with the state- 
ment that their ministries are unlawful is to propose not reunion, but ab- 
sorption; not consideration, but contempt.” (Bishop W. C. Doane, as re- 
ported in a recent address to the Diocesan Convention of Albany, N. Y.) 

“It is a most encouraging sign that Churchmen, no matter who they are, 
should get together to try to do away with the isolation of the Anglican 
communion. It is a good thing for men to recognize that that isolation is 
not natural and is not final in any direction, whether it be considered from 
the point of the compass where Protestantism lies or the opposed point of 
the compass where Romanism is found.” (The Churchman, February 22, 
1908. ) 

“The scope and destiny of the Anglican Communion are here at stake. 
As 2 minority among English-speaking Christians it may indeed maintain 


28 


434 Christianity as Organized 


we determine its true significance? Is it that of simple fidelity 
at all hazards to a divine trust of ministerial orders, containing 
a “great deposit’? of sacramental grace, or is it that of a pathetic 
misconception of the mind of the Master as to the vocation of 
his ministers and the intercommunion of his churches? 


a glorious tradition and preserve an influential type of spiritual life and ac- 
tivity; but its full natural growth and the proper exercise of its ideal func- 
tion are not possible without the recovery of those who have been alienated 
from it in the past.” (Dean Armitage Robinson, “The Vision of Unity,” 
p. 61.) 


IV. 


wee EPISCOPAL IDEA: PATRIARCHAL, IMPERIAL, 
PAPAL: 


THE merely prelatic theory of church government is really a 
theory of diocesan government, and nothing more. For the 
common oversight of two or more dioceses, it can consistently 
make no provision. Because, according to this theory, the whole 
governing power inheres in the individual bishop, each one act- 
ing alone as a monarch in his own district. What then shall be 
the relations of the various bishops to one another? Over which 
district shall each be ruler? Some man or some body of men 
must decide. Or, supposing that there should be agreement as 
to territorial jurisdiction, each several appointee taking posses- 
sion of his particular diocese—how shall all the dioceses collect- 
ively, constituting the Church as a whole, be ruled? _ Where is 
the supreme authority?” 

In some Episcopal churches—the English and the Russian, for 
example—the State is this supreme authority. But it will hard- 
ly be maintained that the rule of the State over the Church is 
also an original institute of Christ. Indeed, how the bishops can 


*Dr. William Jones Seabury’s solution of the difficulty is as follows: “It 
is true that Christ’s commission imposes an obligation upon the bishops to 
act in common, but, inasmuch as the nature of their authority is such as 
to presuppose the power of individual action in direct responsibility to 
Christ alone, the common action can only be by consent and voluntary agree- 
ment, which is federation. Every individual bishop holding an entire share 
of the power of his order is able to exercise it independently of all others 
similarly commissioned; and if he waive this ability in deference to Christ,” 
and so on. (“Introduction to Church Polity,” pp. 150, 151.) I cannot 
reconcile the ideas in either of these two sentences. If “Christ’s commis- 
sion imposes an obligation upon the bishops to act in common,” how can this 
common action “only be by consent and voluntary agreement?” Or, to take 
up the same idea as differently expressed in the next sentence: It either is 
or is not the will of Christ that the bishop should exercise his power inde- 
pendently; if it is, then he cannot rightfully subordinate the exercise of this 
power to the decision of others; if it is not, then he is not rightfully “able 
to exercise it independently.” 


(435) 


436 Christianity as Organized 


consent to it without unfaithfulness, under the successional and 
prelatic theory of the Church’s constitution, is a standing mar- 
vel. If they believe themselves to have been ordained by Christ 
as the supreme lawmakers and rulers of the Church, so that they 
dare not acknowledge either presbyters or people as such, how 
dare they acknowledge a civil ruler as the Church’s head and a 
civil legislature as its lawmaking body? Whence comes the lib- 
erty to surrender to an outside authority at once their own di- 
vinely constituted power of government and the very autonomy 
of the Church itself? Better die than betray such a trust—than 
be guilty of “treason to their great Head.’” 

There are more obvious and less objectionable arrangements, 
however, that might be made. Let the bishops elect one of their 
own number an archbishop, and obey him. Or let them meet 
together in council, either, as in the case of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church, with the cooperation of laymen, or without it, 
and decide all questions according to the will of the majority. 
But these, again, are simply expedient policies; neither of them 
is any part of the supposed original investiture of governing 
power received by each individual bishop from Christ through 
the ‘first Apostles.” 

Who then, we may repeat, shall govern the diocesans them- 
selves, and through them the whole Church, of which the various 
dioceses are only the territorial divisions? 


I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE PATRIARCHAL IDEA. 


The answer of the Orthodox Eastern Church to this question 
is only another expedient arrangement. Above the diocesan bish- 


1“The principle of the apostolic succession involves the truth that the 
bishops of the Catholic Church are clothed with a spiritual authority and a 
responsibility which they cannot alienate from themselves, or commit to the 
secular government, without treason to their great Head. : 

“Tf this then be the case, the English Church has to learn as well as to 
teach—to recover a principle as well as maintain it. For it admits of no ques- 
tion that, for instance, the established Church of Scotland, though it is 
Presbyterian, has maintained more successfully than the Church of England 


with her catholic succession the spiritual independence of Christ’s society.” 


(Gore, “Church and Ministry” (4th ed.), pp. 318, 319.) 


. 
: 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 437 


ops let there be metropolitans; above the metropolitans, patri- 
archs; and supreme over all, the Ecumenical Council. Let the 
patriarchs, under the authority of the Ecumenical Council, each 
stand at the head of his own territory; but let the Patriarch of 
Constantinople hold a primacy of honor over his confréres. For 
was not the “primacy of honor after the city of Rome’”’ given. to 
him by decree of the First Council of Constantinople (in 381) ? 
And now that Rome has not only become unbearable through 
lust of ecclesiastical power, but has fallen away from the Ortho- 
dox faith once for all delivered to the Christians, let Constanti- 
nople be recognized as chief of the three remaining patriarchates 
—Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; and so let the Patriarch of 
Constantinople be, in this sense, and let him therefore be called, 
Ecumenical Patriarch. 

It may be added, that when the churches represented by the 
sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were crushed into 
pitiful feebleness by the conquests of Islam, and when, on the 
other hand, the patriarchate of Constantinople was vastly ex- 
tended—especially by the conversion of Russia—the claim of the 
bishop of Constantinople to the title of Ecumenical Patriarch 
appeared still stronger and more fitting. 

The rule of the patriarchs, however, in certain very impor- 
tant instances, has been more nominal than real. For the dif- 
ferent national churches are left practically to govern them- 
selves—or rather to be governed by the State.” The tie that 
binds them together under the patriarchal superintendence is 
orthodoxy—the accepted standard being the creeds of the seven 
Ecumenical Councils—rather than episcopal authority. Not 
only was the Russian Church, for instance, as we shall see later, 
permitted to have its own patriarch, and afterwards to abolish 
the patriarchate, and set up a government with the Czar and the 
Holy Governing Synod at its head; but since then similar nation- 
al autonomies have been established in Greece, Roumania, Mon- 
tenegro, Servia, and Bulgaria—in all the orthodox European 


*Fairbairn, “Catholicism, Roman and Anglican,” pp. 181, 182, 


438 Christianity as Organized 


states.” In fact, the Czar of Russia has more of the character of 
chief personal ruler in the Church of the East than has the Pa- 
triarch of Constantinople.” 

But how about the Ecumenical Council? That, when con- 
vened, must wield supreme authority. But its meetings would 
seem to be little more than a rather remote possibility; for ac- 
cording to Orthodox reckoning, none has been held for more 
than eleven hundred years. The Second Council of Nice (787) 
is counted as the Seventh and last. It might have seemed pos- 
sible that at some time after the separation from Rome in 1054 
the Eastern Church would convene a general council to settle its 
difficulties (of which it has had a full share), or to restate its 
faith, or to define its relations to other Christian communions. 
But while this has been talked of in recent years and a hope of 
it cherished, thus far nothing of the sort has been done. 

Is it because of an uneasy feeling that since the vast Patri- 
archate of the West, representing many more adherents than all 
the other four put together, has gone off in heresy and schism, 
a properly ecumenical council cannot be held? or is it a case of 
obsession by the idea that the Niczan Council of the eighth 
century, whose chief significance is the sanctioning of image- 
worship, would somehow have been justified in announcing, “The 
Seven Synods are the people, and behold, wisdom will die with 
them?” or shall it be set down to Eastern Orthodoxy’s inertness 
and “arrested development?” or is it rather through fear of 


1There may be counted, indeed, no fewer han sixteen separate and inde- 
pendent ecclesiastical bodies that, by confession of the same system of doc- 
trines and acknowledgment of the primacy of the Ecumenical Patriarch, 
constitute the Orthodox Church of the East. These churches are of all de- 
grees of territorial and numerical strength, from Russia, with her multiplied 
millions of communicants, to Sinai, whose patriarch rules over only the mon- 
astery of St. Katherine on Mt. Sinai with its fourteen daughter houses. 

2“The Czar is the personal, as Constantinople is the local, center of the 
whole Greek Church; and he keeps a lustful eye upon the city of the 
Bosphorus as his future capital, where, at no distant day, there must be a 
tremendous reckoning with Mohammedanism.” (Schaff-Herzog Encyclope- 
dia, Art. “Greek Church.”) 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 439 


some doctrinal derangement from the possible action of such a 
council ? 

This Episcopal Church, then, with the Bishops of Constanti- 
nople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem as its chiefs, and yet 
with the far greater part of its membership outside their juris- 
diction, must be classed as distinctly less than a rigid oligarchy. 

As to its supreme governing and teaching authority, how- 
ever, it claims no lower attribute than infallibility. The assem- 
bled body of its bishops—tnat is to say, the possible ecumenical 
council—can commit no error, either doctrinal or ecclesiastical. 
Such a council will be guided by the Holy Spirit into an infalli- 
ble decision on all matters of faith and even of polity. 


2. ORTHODOXY THE PREDOMINANT NOTE OF THE EASTERN 
CHURCH. 


Here perhaps may be found the chief explanation of the long 
intermittence of the ecumenical councils. With the adjournment 
of the last of these councils the creed of the Eastern Church was, 
according to her profession, fixed unchangeably. Let no oppor- 
tunity or temptation, therefore, be given for any further legis- 
lation on the subject, lest there be disturbing results. 

With the Church of Rome it is different. She adds to her 
dogmas. Under the veil of “development” and ‘‘definition,” she 
may tax the consciences of the faithful with new articles of faith. 
Cardinal Newman could write an “Essay on the Development of 
Christian Doctrine,” and declare that “to grow is to change, and 
to be perfect is to have changed often;” but it would probably 
be impossible to find a similar book or sentiment from the pen 
of an Orthodox Eastern theologian. A pope or an ecumenical 
council may frame such a dogma as the Immaculate Conception 
or Papal Infallibility in the nineteenth century or in any other. 
Protestant churches, also, may and sometimes do revise their 
confessions of faith. But Eastern Orthodoxy is content to rest 
strictly in the faith of the fathers. Concerning “the develop- 
ment of Christian doctrine” subsequent to 787 A.D., it has 


440 Christianity as Organized 


simply to say, There is none. It wants no “development,” no 
“definitions,” no “revisions.” Not unnaturally, therefore, it 
might fear lest in the discussions and decisions of an ecumenical 
council it should be “disturbed in its ancient, solitary reign.” It 
loves the dim shelter of the “ivy-mantled tower.” 

Since the great schism of 1054 Rome has made repeated ef- 
forts to win the Orthodox Eastern Church back into her com- 
munion. Three reunion councils have been held—namely, in 
1098, in 1274, and in 1439. The last of these, which was held 
at Ferrara-Florence, seemed for a time to have succeeded. It 
was numerously attended by bishops and other representatives 
of the two churches—the Pope, the Emperor, and the Patriarch 
of Constantinople being included in the number. An agreement 
was reached on even the most troublesome of the points in dis- 
pute, the Filioque of the Nicene Creed and the Primacy of the 
Pope. So the restored unity of the Church was decreed and pub- 
lished. 

But this reunion, which lasted for the space of thirty-three 
_ years, was official only. It did not show the signs of intellectual 
conviction and Christian love. The motive of the East for con- 
senting to it was to get an army from the West to help defend 
the city of Constantinople against the long-threatened, and now 
terribly threatening, attack of the Turks. But the West sent no 
army worthy of mention; Constantinople fell; the Christian Em- 
pire perished. Then, after a few years (in 1472), the poor, su- 
perficial reunion of the Western and the Eastern Church that 
had been proclaimed at Florence was formally repudiated by a 
synod of Constantinople. ’ 

Since that time the prospect of reunion has been rendered still 
more hopeless by the addition of the two dogmas of the Immac- 
ulate Conception and Papal Infallibility to the Roman creed. 
These dogmas the Church of the East looks upon as out-and-out 
novelties, unheard-of in the early Church, products of the rest- 
less brains of creed-tampering Western schismatics. In a word, 
the whole attitude of the Orthodox theologians and rulers to- 
ward any suggestion of yielding to the claims or invitations 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal. 44% 


(that, for example, of Pope Leo XIII. in 1894)* of what they 
call the Papic Church (7 éx«Aynova max) seems to be that of un- 
hesitating and even scornful refusal. 

Nor, as we have seen, have the tentative approaches of the 
English Ritualists and the Old Catholics to open a way for inter- 
communion with the Church of the Seven Councils met with 
any real success. “We only are Orthodox, your heresies must 
be renounced,” is the rock on which all such efforts have thus 
far gone to pieces. 

Claiming, then, to be the original Church of Christ, not only 
through the succession of bishops without an autocratic head but 
also and chiefly through the succession of official orthodox 
teaching—in brief, being both “Apostolic” and “Orthodoxr”’— 
the Eastern Church looks upon Rome as the arch-heretic and 
upon Protestant bodies as similarly out of the way. Moreover, 
through its common creed and patriarchal administration, it re- 
joices to avoid, on the one hand, papal autocracy, and, on the 
other, Protestant disorder. With true Aristotelian wisdom the 
“Greek” Church would keep this golden mean—steadily pro- 
claiming itself meanwhile the one true Christian Ecclesia, ‘the 
one and only heir of Christ and the only ark of salvation left to 
men by God’s grace.” 


The Ecumenical Patriarch is elected by the bishops of his patriarchate, 
in cooperation with a mixed council composed of bishops and laymen. His 
election must be confirmed by the Sultan. Indeed, he may be, and in many 
instances has been, deposed by the Sultan. But this has usually been done, 
it seems, at the request of Christians themselves. Because of the lamenta- 
ble presence of contending parties in the Church, depositions and reappoint- 
ments have been not infrequent occurrences. His title, worthy of notice only 
as an example of Eastern grandiloquence, is: “The most holy, the most 
divine, the most wise Lord, the Lord Archbishop of Constantinople, New 
Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch.” 

Bishops must be not less than thirty years of age and unmarried. To 
them alone is given the power of ordination. But to the next lower order 


1¢The yearning desire of Our heart bids Us conceive and hope that the 
day is not far distant when the Eastern Churches, so illustrious in their an- 
cient faith and glorious past, will return to the fold they have abandoned.” 
(Encyclical Letter on “The Reunion of Christendom,” June 20, 1894.) 


442 Christianity as Organized 


of ministers, the priests, are committed the other six sacraments, or “mys- 
teries’—namely, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, confirmation, penance, anoint- 
ing the sick (évy#Aqov, prayer-and-oil), matrimony. 

Priests may be either married (but not twice married) or unmarried at 
the time of ordination—though, as a matter of fact, in almost every case 
they are married. But under no circumstances are they permitted to marry 
afterwards.* They are appointed to their parishes by the bishop. Quite un- 
like the Roman priests, they wear long hair and full flowing beard. 

Note some peculiar features in the administration of the “mysteries,” as 
compared with their administration in the Roman Church. Confession is 
made only to a priest who has reached the age of forty years, and, having 
been duly authorized by the bishop, becomes thus a “ghostly father” — 
(wvevdrixoc). It is infrequent and lacking in specificness. It usually includes 
only declarations of sinfulness in general or of what are accounted the most 
serious sins. What is of more significance, penance is not a satisfaction 
offered by the penitent for his sins, but a help toward a better life; and it is 
not prescribed unless asked for. There are no confessionals: confessor and — 
penitent stand in full view of the congregation. Absolution is given in an 
optative, not a declarative, form: “The Lord absolve thee.” 

At the Lord’s Supper the congregation fall down in worship as the offi- 
ciating priest and his assistants enter the church with the bread and wine 
as yet unconsecrated; and the consecration takes place out of view of the 
congregation, behind a curtain which is in imitation of the veil before the 
Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and the Temple. Both the bread and the 
wine are given to the laity, who receive it standing, and from a gold or gilt 
spoon in which both elements are contained—leavened bread soaked in wine; 
and in the number of communicants even baptized infants are included. It 
is usual for these to intermit the taking of the communion at three or four 
years of age, and to resume it when they begin the practice of confession, 
at about the age of seven. The change of the bread and wine into the body 
and blood of Christ is believed to take place not, as the Roman Church 
teaches, when the Lord’s words of institution are recited by the priest, but 
a little later in the ceremony when a special prayer ('EmixAyjow) for this 
miraculous change is offered. 

Communion is given to the people-four times a year—the appointed days 
being Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and “the Falling Asleep of the 
Mother of God” (August 15). Also, at these times particularly people 


1This law, like most features of the Eastern Church, is in accordance with 
a rule of the early Church—in this case a rule which not only forbade the 
marriage of priests but also the ordination of men who had already been 
twice married. “We have already said that a bishop, a priest, and a deacon, 
when they are constituted, must be but once married, whether their wives 
are alive or whether they be dead, and that it is not lawful for them, if they 
are unmarried when they are ordained, to be married afterwards.” (Const. 


Apost., vi. 17.) j 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 443 


are expected to make confession; and penance, if asked for, is pre- 
scribed. 

Baptism is by dipping three times in water. Confirmation is administered 
not by the bishop but by the priest, and even in the case of infants it is 
given at the time of baptism. The ceremony consists not in the laying on 
of hands but in anointing with an oil which the bishop only is permitted to 
consecrate—so that the bishop too has some part in this rite.* 

The anointing of the sick with oil may be administered repeatedly; for its 
motive is their recovery to health rather than, as in the extreme unction 
of the Roman Church, their preparation for death. Preferably it is per- 
formed not by a single priest, but by several—seven being regarded as the 
perfect number. 

Ordained monks, as in the Roman Church, are the regular (living-up-to- 
rule) clergy, in contradiction to the “secular” clergy. The peculiar honor 
that is put upon them—namely, that only out of their ranks may bishops be 
chosen—is not in compliance with any written law, but in accordance with 
a primitive custom that has the force of law. 

The minor orders of church officers—below the order of deacon—are 
strangely numerous. They are divided into groups, and these into classes. 
Such officers as the keeper of archives, the bearer of images, the ringer of 
bells, and the cleaner of lamps, are included among them. This excessive 
multiplication of officials is akin to the excessive ceremonialism and rude 
splendor of the Orthodox ritual.* 


The use of no instrument of music, not even an organ, is per- 
mitted in the churches. For was not the primitive Christian 
custom that of singing only? Choirs are composed of men and 
boys exclusively; and it is the custom to train them very care- 


fully for their office. The Eastern chant has been described as 


“the most wonderful display of accurate ear and skill in the 
world.” But to a stranger it is likely to prove unattractive or 
even painful. , 

While pictures, mosaics, and bas-relief sculpture are freely 
used in worship, the use of statuary and high-relief sculpture is 
prohibited. Nor is the distinction wholly an arbitrary one. It 


apparently rests upon two grounds: (1) that the ancient idols 


*An instance of the utter overdoing of ritual is seen in the fact that no 
fewer than forty ingredients enter into the composition of this “chrism,” or 
anointing oil. 

*“The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox Eastern Church;’ “The Holy 
Catechism” of Nicolas Bulgaris; Fortescue, “The Orthodox Eastern 
Church.” 


444 Christiamty as Organized 


of Greece were statues, not pictures; (2) that images are forbid- 
den—in the Second Commandment, for example—because of 
the danger of the worshiper’s identifying or confusing the image 
with the being represented by it, which, it is supposed, is not 
likely to take place except in the case of the statue or the high- 
relief image. Not, however, that such a supposition is well 
founded ; for the facts are against it. The icons of the orthodox 
Russian, for instance, receive as idolatrous a veneration as the 
statues of the Roman Catholic. 

The Eastern Church, unlike the Roman, has no universal lan- 
guage for its liturgical services. It might indeed make out 
better case for the universal and perpetual use of its original 
Greek, the language of the New Testament and of the earliest 
Christian fathers, than Rome is able to prove for its ecclesiastic 
Latin. But both the national and the popular spirit have for 
bidden. Each people must be permitted to worship in its own 
native tongue. 

Public worship takes the form of a long and showy cere- 
monial. Distinctly scenic in character, it is adapted to delight 
or to weary the senses, not to minister grace and knowledge to 
the worshiper. Of preaching there is little or none. And the 
effect of their religion upon the moral life and conduct of the 
people seems to be painfully small.’ 


3. THE IMPERIAL IDEA IN THE Russo-GREEK CHURCH. 


Where shall we look for an embodiment of the idea of the 
civil governor as at the same time the supreme governor of the 
Church in his dominions—the idea of Imperial Episcopacy? It | 
appears, however inconsistently with the divine right claimed b 
High Churchmen for the bishops, as well as with the evangelical 


1“They have even a more complicated system of ceremonies [than the 
Roman Catholics], with gorgeous display, semi-barbaric pomp, and endless _ 
changes of sacerdotal dress, crossings, gestures, genuflections, prostrations, 
washings, processions, which so absorb the attention of the senses that there 
is little room left for intellectual and spiritual worship.” (Schaff-Herzog 
Encyclopedia, Art. “Greek Church.”) 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 445 


conception of Christianity, in the King’s headship of the Church 
of England. But it may be seen in a more distinct and powerful 
form in another state-church, which will now for a little while 
engage our attention. 

Immobile, superstitious, politically entangled, humiliated by 
the sword and scepter of the Infidel, the Church of the East, 
since the early centuries, has taken but an insignificant part in 
the progress of the kingdom of God in the world. And its part | 
would have been still less but for the conversion of a people, 
scattered, it is true, through grim forests and over dreary, mo- 
notonous plains, but extending their boundaries east and west, 
and destined to become one of the mightiest of world powers. 
Russia was Christianized from Constantinople; nor has it fal- 
tered for one moment in its devotion to the form of Christianity 
thus received. 

Of the hundred million members of the Eastern Church to- 
day, three-fourths or more live under the government of the 
Czar. It is the Slav, not the Greek, by whom the ancient Greek 
orthodoxy is now most prominently represented. 

Russian Christianity dates from the tenth century. It sup- 
planted a simple form of nature-worship, in which the sky, the 
sun, the thunder, the frost, the earth, were deified, and a mul- 
titude of spirits infested the woods, the streams, and the homes 
of the people. Without a temple, without a priesthood, with 
rude images only, the worshipers from their miserable huts gath- 
ered together, in the forest or on the hills, to seek the favor of 
their gods.” 

The story of the overthrow of this ancient superstition by 
Eastern Christianity is largely legendary; but there seems no 
doubt that it contains an authentic account of a national conver- 


*Noble, “Russia and the Russians,” pp. 3-5. 

*“Tt seemed to me useless to give Nestor’s narrative of the Russians’ con- 
version; for a great part of it, especially the alleged investigation by Vladi- 
mir of Judaism, Islamism, and Christianity, Greek and Latin, bears all the 
appearance of being a legend.” (Leroy-Beaulieu, “Empire of the Tsars,” 
Vol. III, p. 29, n.) 


446 Christianity as Organized 


sion. The Grand Prince Vladimir—whose grandmother, Olga, 
and whose wife, Anne, daughter of the Eastern Emperor Basil, 
were Christians—made profession of the Christian faith. Then 
at his word the idols of the land were burned, or hewn in pieces, 
or cast into the Dnieper, and at Kiev in the same river the people 
were baptized. There is no record of any serious opposition to 
the royal commands. As the work of conversion advanced north- 
ward, however, it did encounter opposition, and was carried on 
by force. But the Russ, though a hard fighter in battle and not 
destitute of individuality, was of docile temperament, then as 
now reverent and submissive to authority. Moreover, his bar- 
baric tastes were well pleased with the ceremonial of the Church; 
and what was of greater importance, he was notably of a re- 
ligious spirit. So his ecclesiastical conversion proved to be no 
difficult task, and was soon completed. 

As in certain more familiar historic instances, however, a par- 
tial compromise was effected between the old faith and the new. 
Favorite heathen gods continued to be adored, only they were 
somewhat transformed by bearing the names of Christian saints. 
And these maintain their place in the popular faith even in the 
present day.” In the higher classes there is less of superstition, 
but instead of more true religion, skepticism and indifference. 

The Church of Russia was included in the Patriarchate of Con- 
stantinople. But after the founding of Moscow and the re- 
moval of both the capital and the metropolitan see to that new 
northern city, the Russian Church became practically independ- 


1“FTence, though monotheism is the avowed faith of the Orthodox Church, 
the Russian peasant continues to believe more or less in the original poly- 
theism of his pagan ancestors. He does not name the various divinities, and 
may not hold them consciously apart in his mind, yet he finds their chief char- 
acters again in the attributes which he has been taught to associate with the 
principal saints of the Christian calendar. As seen, moreover, in his super- 
stitions, in those spirit invocations and magical formule which form so con- 
siderable a part of popular literature, he continues to believe in that same spir- 
it world which Grand-Prince Vladimir, by a mere ceremony of baptism, vain- 
‘ly supposed that he could vanish forever from the Russian land.” (Noble, 
“Russia and the Russians,” pp. 175, 176.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 447 


ent. For the Grand-Prince now appointed, on his sole authority 
and with the concurrence of a conference of bishops, a Metro- 
politan of Russia. A century later the metropolitan was made a 
patriarch, and Moscow, now declared to be the Third Rome, be- 
came a patriarchate, coordinate with those of Constantinople, 
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The Russian patriarchs, 
however, at their own request, were regularly confirmed in their 
office by the Patriarch of Constantinople, until, in 1660, Russia 
was formally authorized by the Eastern Church to elect its own 
patriarch and dispense with his confirmation by Constantinople.’ 


4. AUTOCRATIC RULE OF THE CZAR. 


But the real ecclesiastic ruler of Russia is the Czar. From 
Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584) to Nicholas II. (1894 ), the 
reigning sovereign has wielded despotic power in Church as well 
as in State. The Church, indeed, greatly helped to make him 
what he is. All through the feudal period the effort at the cen- 
tralization of power was seconded by the ecclesiastics. It was 
their strong and persistent hands, among others, that crowned 
the Grand Prince Autocrat of all the Russias. And now, with- 
out unwillingness on their part, he became their own iron-handed 
chief. The Orthodox faith wrought alike for the unification of 
the Church and of the State in an absolute monarchy. 

At the Czar’s command even the patriarch had to yield up his 
office long ago. Peter the Great (1689-1725) abolished the of- 
fice, and established in its stead The Most Holy Governing 
Synod. “I am your patriarch,” was his reply to the request for 
its restoration.” And the people would have it so; for their 


*Alzog, “Universal Church History,’ Vol. III., pp. 468-470; Stanley, “The 
Eastern Church,” Lect. X. 4 

*“Tt is clear throughout that Peter is dealing with a rival power. That 
Russia may have but one head, he beheads the Church. He knew how much 
more docile a tool he would have in a synod composed of members appointed 
by the sovereign, divided in opinions and interests, and bearing a divided re- 
sponsibility, than in a supreme pastor independently elected and head of 
the Church in his own right, with her entire power centered in his person.” 
(Leroy-Beaulieu, “Empire of the Tsars,” Vol. III., p. 160.) 


448 Christianity as Organized 


submission to the Czar is essentially a religious feeling. It is 
that of Imperial Rome for its Emperor, or that of Japan for its 
Mikado, determined by the imagination and reverence of the 
semi-Christian Slav. 
Nowhere else in Christendom is the union of Church and 
State so close—the Church so utterly lacking in autonomy. No-— 
where else is the theocratic idea so strongly presented. Moscow, ~ 
the more ancient seat of government, with its Patriarchal Cathe- 
dral, where still the Czars are crowned, is the Russian Jerusalem; 
in the language of the peasants: “Our holy mother, Moscow.” 
Russia herself is Holy Russia. Her wars are crusades; her mis- 
sion, to plant the cross in the lands of the Infidel and the pagan. 
And as to the Czar, God himself has ordained him, clothed him 
with unlimited power, set him to rule in the nation and the 
Church. Are there those who do not believe that the “Orthodox © 
monarchs have been raised to the throne by virtue of a special 
grace of God—nor that at the moment the sacred oil is laid upon 
them, the gifts of the Holy Ghost are infused into them anent — 
the accomplishment of their exalted mission?’ Such unbeliey- 
ers are pronounced accursed every year by the Church: “Anathe- 
ma! anathema! anathema!” It is not about the person of any 
priest or bishop, as a visible object, but about the person of the 
anointed sovereign, that the religious sense of the nation gathers.” 
It is under the spell of his awful claim to the obedience of those 
whom he calls ‘““My Children,” that the people have bowed and 
crossed themselves in idolatrous homage and fear through the 
centuries.” 


“There can be no reasonable doubt that the power of Russia’s Czar, vast 
and arbitrary as it is, derives its strength from the Russian people. It is not 
the Czar’s personal power; it is his power as head of the national Church, 
as semi-sacred representative of the race and its historical development and 
organization.” (Woodrow Wilson, “The State,” p. 506.) 

*It used to be the custom for the people to fall upon their knees in the 
street when the Czar passed along; but this form of idolatry was brushed 
aside by one of the reforming dicta of Peter the Great: “Where is the dif-— 
ference,” he said, “between God and the Czar, if the same honors are paid 
to both? The honor due to me consists in people crawling before me less, 
but in serving me and the state with the more zeal and fidelity.” 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 449 


Not that this spirit of unselfish but misdirected loyalty is uni- 
versal. There are large and significant exceptions. That “in- 
vasion of ideas’ which batteries and bayonets are impotent to 
resist has not spared the dominions of the Czar. The long pro- 
cession of political exiles to the death-in-life of Siberia tells the 
story of a determined opposition both to the abuses and the prin- 
ciple of absolutism; and now more hopefully than ever, it prom- 
ises their overthrow. Not only so, but a great army of Dissent- 
ers, rationalistic, evangelical, mystical, some exceeding fanatical 
and corrupt, dating from the seventeenth century onward, and 
numbering now from 2,000,000 to 15,000,000, represents the 
protest against the same autocratic rule extended into the sphere 
of religion. 

The members of the Most Holy Governing Synod are ap- 
pointed by the Czar. It is really his representative, not in any 
proper sense the representative of the Church, and is so de- 
scribed in both the Civil and the Ecclesiastical Code. Is the 
Czar, then, a pope? Not so. He is, indeed, adored, like the 
pope, as the image of God on earth, with none above him; but 
his ecclesiastical authority embraces the sphere of government 
only. On no question of doctrine has he ever undertaken to 
speak. His government is C@saro-papal. 


The Synod is composed of metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, abbots, 
and two married priests. It acts under the control of the High Procurator, 
a layman appointed by the Czar to see that it executes the royal will. He 
presents to the Synod the measures which the Czar would have it pass, and 
to the Czar the acts of the Synod for his approval or veto. Indeed, every 
act of the Synod must be validated by the High Procurator, as the Czar's 
representative before the body. 

The Empire is divided into sixty dioceses, of which about fifty are in 
Europe. No bishop bears rule over any other. The titles metropolitan, 
archbishop, and bishop represent differences of rank or dignity, but not a 
graded jurisdiction. All are appointed by the Czar, but on the nomination 
of the Synod, which is permitted to present three nominees for any vacancy 
that may have to be filled. In most cases the bishops’ homes are in convents 
and their habits of life abstemious, the same after elevation to the episcopate 
as before. 

The bishop is assisted in the government of his diocese by the Diocesan 
Consistory, whose members are chosen by himself and whose acts are not 


29 


450 Christianity as Orgamzed _ ~ Sir 


valid without his confirmation. All matters of any moment that come before 
this body—as, for instance, the building of a church or the permission of a 
bishop to be absent as long as three days from his diocese—must be referred 
to the Synod. In general, the machinery of government is heavy, and there 
is much officialism and many abuses.* 


Bishops are chosen from the monks, or “black” clergy (so 
called from the color of their garments). Not, however, from 
the common class of monks; for these as a rule are extremely : 
ignorant and inert, distinctly inferior to the secular clergy. To 
set them above the secular clergy, therefore, in the office of 
bishop, would be a preposterous procedure. But when an edu- 
cated young man—having graduated, let us say, from an “acad- 
emy” or a church “seminary”—decides to seek admission into 
the priesthood, he has before him the choice of a place among 
either the married or the celibate priests. If he choose celibacy, 
he takes the vows, is probably appointed teacher in a church 
school, then perhaps is made father superior of a monastery, 
and may soon be elected bishop. Of the monk’s life as it is or- 
dinarily lived, he knows little or nothing. So, through a per- 
version of the original idea of monachism, the wearing of the 
cowl is made a sine qua non to the bearing of the episcopal 
staff : “the vow of poverty has become the door of fortune.” 

The married, or secular, or “white,” clergy (so called simply 
in contradistinction to the monks) are for the most part sons of 
clergymen, and are regularly educated for their office in a 
church “seminary’—sometimes also taking a course in an “acad- 
emy.” As a class they live and die very poor. Because, not- 
withstanding the close connection between Church and State, the 
majority of the parish priests receive no stipend from the goy- 
ernment. Generally they have the use of a piece of land, which 
the peasants of their charge help them to cultivate; but their 
principal source of income is in the form of fees for particular 
services, such as the administration of sacraments, the pronoun- 
cing of blessing on various occasions, and the burial of the dead. 


1The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox Eastern Church;” Leroy- 
Beaulieu, “The Empire of the Tsar,” 


: 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 451 


The priest is often not a man of high Christian character, or 
even of temperate habits. That he should drink to drunkenness 
—in visiting his people from house to house, for instance—does 
not seem to be regarded as a serious fault. And he may always 
count upon being respected for his office’ sake. On the other 
hand, his parishioners, the great majority of whom in most cases 
are peasants, may expect from him a certain kindly sympathy 
and friendly ministration. Only of such as he has will he be 
able to give; therefore of preaching he does almost or quite 
none, and in spiritual power his ministry is lamentably deficient. 

The church service in Russia is rendered in an old form of the 
Slavonic language, the alphabet of which was invented by the 
brothers Cyril and Methodius, as a part of their missionary 
work among the Slavs in the ninth century. Up to the eighteenth 
century it was the written language of the Russian people; and 
this Church-Slavic is still intelligible to them, while at the same 
time impressive because of its antiquity and its separation from 
common uses. 

The Scriptures have been translated into the popular dialect; 
and the Gospels and Psalms are read or listened to by the peas- 
ant in his squalid home with much enjoyment. For a long time, 
however, the older version (in Church-Slavic) was preferred— 
the language of everyday life seeming to detract from the dig- 
nity and charm of the sacred story. 

The Russ is a great lover of ritual forms; not, it would seem, 
on account of their original symbolic meaning, but because of 
their impression upon the senses, and the magic influence with 
which the imagination clothes them. Hence the large element of 
paganism in his Christianity. Mass is celebrated (never private- 
ly or under an abridged form, as with the Roman Catholics), 
even in the rudest village church, in an ornate and dramatic 
manner which makes it gratifying to the congregation. The 
choir-singing in the churches is also greatly admired. 

The inveterate tendency toward idolatry is seen in the Russian 
use of icons. These are pictures or carvings on wood or metal, 
some of them not of larger size than two or three inches square, 


452 Christianity as Organized 


representing some sacred person or object—commonly a saint or 
the Virgin Mary. Not only in churches but also in other public 
places and in private houses they are everywhere to be found. 
Every family aims to have at least one in each room of the 
house. They are recipients of the greatest superstitious rever- 
ence. In church or home candles or lamps are burned before 
them, as symbols of prayer. The visitor is expected to salute 
them, the first thing, on entering any room of a private house. 
When a sinful act is about to be committed, not infrequently a 
curtain is placed before the icon, that the sacred presence may 
not be violated or offended. 


5. THE Papa IpEA THAT OF A BisHop OF BisHops. 


Very different from any of the foregoing answers as to the 
headship of the Church is that of the bishop of Rome. “None 
of us,” said Cyprian of Carthage, “does make himself a bishop 
of bishops.” But Rome has declared in tones of thunder for 
fourteen hundred years: There is a bishop of bishops, even the 
Roman Bishop, the one and only vicar of Christ on earth; he 
may judge the other bishops, and may not be judged by them. 
Here, then, the prelatic idea reaches its logical completeness. 
Not a number of rulers co-equal in authority, Divinely appoint- 
ed, and then left to consult and agree among themselves as to 
the making and the administration of law. Not that; but a pure 
and simple monarchy—the single headship of the pope, who is 
the fountain of all jurisdiction, from whose authority there is 
no appeal, and in obedience to whom rests perpetually the unity 
of the Church. 

It would be hard to exaggerate the authority of the pope. 
is the supreme legislator ; he singly and alone may make laws, if 
he will, that shall be binding upon the whole Church; or, if he 
will, may convene an ecumenical council, preside over its delib- 
erations, and either confirm or annul its decrees. He is the 
supreme judge, the highest court of appeal on all ecclesiastical 
questions; so that, in the language of the Vatican Council, “in 
all causes the decision of which belongs to the Church, recoursé 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 453 


may be had to his tribunal,’ and “none may reopen the judgment 
of the Apostolic See, than whose authority there is no greater, 
nor can any lawfully review its judgments.” He, the lawmaker 


- and judge, is also the supreme executive ; appointing all the high- 


er ecclesiastics; sending out legates to foreign countries; estab- 
lishing or repressing any religious order; releasing his subjects 
from the obligation of vows; granting the remission of the pen- 
alty of temporal punishments for sin; through canonization mak- 
ing certain deceased Christians objects of worship to Christians 
on earth; deposing at his discretion any bishop, priest, or deacon 
anywhere in the Church. 

Nor is the papal authority restricted in its claim to Roman 
Catholics. It extends (theoretically) to all baptized persons, 
Greek and Protestant as well as Catholic—as, indeed, does the 
authority of each bishop within the limits of his diocese. It is 
not even restricted to the ecclesiastic sphere; for has not the suc- 
cessor of Peter asserted the right to govern the nations in the 
interest of the Church, and to depose any civil ruler that may 
resist his will? 

Neither is this all. Theologically as well as ecclesiastically the 
Papal See is supreme. Speaking ex cathedra to the whole Church 
on any point of doctrine or morals, the pope must be listened to 
as supernaturally preserved from all error. He is the absolutely 
infallible teacher. On his sole authority, with no reference what- 
ever to a General Council, he may add a doctrine to the creed 
of the Church which none of the faithful dare refuse to profess; 
as, for instance, when Benedict VIII. authorized the addition of 
the Filioque to the Nicene Creed—and shall we say lost to Rome 
forever the four patriarchates of the East?—or when Pius IX. 
defined and declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. 


_ Accordingly both the papal commands and the papal definitions 
_ of doctrine and of morals are to be accepted, on pain of exclu- 
_ sion from the one Church of Christ and the grace of salvation." 


Since the middle of the eleventh century the pope has been 


*See p. 347. 


454 Christianity as Organized 


elected by the cardinals. These are clerical dignitaries, receiy- 
ing their office immediately from the pope, seventy in number 
when the college is complete—bishops, priests, and deacons of 
Rome and its vicinity. Even though some should reside in for- 
eign lands—as, for instance, one in England or one in America 
—they are all, either theoretically or actually, connected with the 
churches of the city of Rome.’ 

It should be noted that this election is placed in the hands of 
the cardinals not because they are supposed to represent the 
whole Church, but because they represent the diocese of the city 
of Rome itself. For the Holy Father is first of all bishop of 
Rome, and in virtue of this office becomes universal bishop. Ap- 
propriately, therefore, he is elected by the clergy of his own dio- 
cese, 

Also, according to a custom which has prevailed for five hun- 
dred years (since Urban VI., 1378-1382), the pope is always 
selected out of the college of cardinals. But there is no written 
law on the subject. 


The Archbishop, in addition to the superintendency of the several dioceses 
that make up his province, has a diocese of which he alone is bishop. He 
receives reports from the diocesan bishops and makes visitations in their 
dioceses as well as in his own. It is his prerogatve also to call provincial 
councils and preside over them. 

The Bishop takes the oversight of his diocese as chief executive officer; 
and in addition to the power to administer all the sacraments he is author- 


Nicholas II., under the guidance of Hildebrand, now a cardinal, revyo- 
lutionized the ancient election of the Bishop of Rome, which, like that of all 
others, had been by the concurrence of clergy and people. His decree of 
1059 now gave the initiative of the election to the cardinal bishops in the 
neighborhood of Rome and the cardinal priests in that city. (Certain chi 
functionaries, being the ‘hinges’ on which the rest of the machine moved, 
had come to be called ‘cardinals;’ and their elective assembly was after- 
wards known as the ‘conclave.’)” (Innes, “Church and State,” pp. 70, 71.) 

The object of Hildebrand, who was then an archdeacon and the power 
behind the papal throne, was to free the election of the popes from the part 
which the emperors had long been accustomed to take in it Hildebrand’s 
own election to the papacy, fourteen years after, which received the confirma- 
tion of Henry IV., was the last instance of a papal election confirmed by th 
Emperor. 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 455 


ized to consecrate things for sacred uses—such, for instance, as buildings 
for public worship and oil for extreme unction. He appoints the priests of 
his diocese (with the exception of certain “irremovable”’ ones) or removes 
them at his will. As the archbishop has his own diocese, so the diocesan 
bishop has his own parish, with its church edifice (the cathedral, or church 
of the bishop’s chair). In him also rests—in the United States, at least—the 
title to all church edifices. 

The bishop is chosen for his office by different methods in different coun- 
tries. In the United States the process is somewhat elaborate. Certain 
priests of the diocese, the “diocesan consultors” and the “irremovable rec- 
tors,’ meet together and select the three men who seem to them most suit- 
able for the vacant episcopal chair, and send their names arranged in the 
order of excellence (dignissimus, dignior, dignus), to the Roman Propa- 
ganda. At the same time they send these same three names to the arch- 
bishop of the province for the consideration of a meeting of all the bishops 
of the province. At this meeting the bishops must also themselves choose 
three names and send them to the Propaganda; and in case of theirs being 
different names from the other three, they must indicate the reasons there- 
for. Out of the names thus presented the Propaganda may choose one or, 
if they see fit, may reject all and make an independent choice. But in every 
instance the final choice, or confirmation of the choice of others, rests with 
the pope. Without him no bishop can be made. 

The rite of ordination to the episcopacy is performed by three bishops. 
Ordination by a single bishop would be valid, but it would also be “illicit.” 
In South America, however, a bishop may be ordained by one bishop and 
two or three priests, in cases where it is difficult to secure the attendance of 
three bishops. 

The bishop administers the rite of confirmation. In the case, however, 
of certain priests in missions, permission to confirm is given by the pope. 
Which seems to show that the “power” to administer this sacrament is con- 
ferred in ordination to the priesthood; but the exercise of it is ordinarily re- 
served for the bishop only. 

The Vicar-Apostolic is the presiding officer of a missionary district not 
yet erected into a diocese. 

The ministry is constituted in seven orders, of which the four lesser— 
namely, those of Porter, Reader, Exorcist, Acolyte—are known as Minor 
Orders; and the three greater—those of Subdeacon, Deacon, Priest—are 
called Holy Orders. Ordination to any one of these orders “imprints a 
character,” which has reference to the saying of Mass; so that the ordinand 
can never lose or in any way get rid of the peculiar power which it conveys. 
No matter how much he might desire it, he cannot again become a layman." 
No matter though he should degenerate into the grossest of habitual volup- 


1Cf. the effect of baptism according to the dogma of baptismal regen- 
eration. 


456 Christianity as Organized 


tuaries or the cruelest of criminals or the most radical of apostates and 
infidels, he still possesses the peculiar power, still bears the “character,” re- 
ceived in ordination.t Once ordained to the priesthood, for example, he 
retains unto the end of life, as a very part of himself, the power to change 
a bit of bread into the body of Christ by pronouncing over it, with the in- 
tention of effecting such a change, the formula of consecration (“Hoc est 
enim corpus meum’). 

The same thing, it may be noted, is not true of the power to hear con- 
fessions and grant absolution. In order to exercise this function one must 
receive at the hands of the bishop not only ordination but “jurisdiction” in 
some particular diocese. 

The priest comes into direct contact with the people. He is not only or- 
dained but also chosen to his office by the bishop. He must rule his parish, 
administer sacraments, give blessings, hear confessions, pronounce absolu- 
tions, and preach. Chief of all his functions, the one in virtue of which he 
is named priest and not simply presbyter, is that of saying Mass. For as 
God’s representative he is authorized by the Church not only to forgive 
sins, but to change the very substance of the bread and wine on the altar 
into the body and blood of Christ, to offer it a sacrifice for sins, and with 
it to feed the souls of communicants. 

Married priests are tolerated by the Roman churches in the East (the © 
Uniates), as are a number of usages not permitted in the West. 

Deacons are assistants of the priests (as sub-deacons are assistants of the 
deacons), authorized to administer the sacrament of baptism, to read the 
Gospels in the congregation, and to preach. They are eligible for promo- 
tion to the priesthood. 

The laity are intrusted with no part whatever in church government. 
They have only to obey, and are thoroughly drilled in obedience to their 
rulers: the voice of the priest must be to them the voice of God.* 

The general administration of the Church is carried on through what are — 
called Congregations. These are boards composed of ecclesiastics appointed 


*“Orders also confer another grace, which is a special power in reference 
to the Holy Eucharist; a power full and perfect in the priest, . . . but 
in the subordinate ministers greater or less in proportion to their approxi- 
mation to the sacred mysteries of the altar. This power is also denominated 
a spiritual character, which, by a certain interior mark impressed on the 
soul, distinguishes the ecclesiastic from the rest of the faithful, and devotes 
them specially to the divine service.” (“Catechism of the Council of Trent,” — 
On the Sacrament of Orders.) 

*“Tnstruction by the spoken word is the ordinary mode of instruction for 
the larger part of mankind, especially in the Church of God, where all is 
done by the way of authority. Whether it be a matter of belief or of con- 
duct, of the sharpness of precept or the tenderness of counsel, the Christian 
must learn these truths and these rules from the mouth of his pastors.” 
(“Ribet, L’ Ascétique Chrétienne,” p. 452.) 


a 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 457 


by the pope, located in the city of Rome, and presided over by a cardinal 
or by the pope himself. One is called the Holy Office, or the Holy Roman 
Inquisition, whose business it is to investigate and to try cases of heresy. 
Even bishops may be brought before this tribunal. Another is the Council, 
whose function is to interpret the Decrees of the Council of Trent. Still 
others are the Propaganda, which has charge of the missionary operations 
of the Church, and the Index, which examines books suspected of heresy, 
and prohibits the reading of such as are condemned. Eleven Congregations 
in all.* 


6. BisHops’ AND Popr’s ORDER THAT OF PRIESTHOOD. 


It will be noticed that the episcopate is not included in the Holy 
Orders. The bishop, it is true, stands above the priest in the 
order of jurisdiction—somewhat as the archbishop stands above 
the bishop, or the pope at the head of the whole hierarchy.’ 
Moreover, he is made the administrator of a sacrament, namely, 
ordination to the priesthood, which the mere priest cannot ad- 
minister, and of another, confirmation, which the priest cannot 
administer without a special dispensation from the pope. Never- 
theless his episcopal ordination is not, like ordination to the 
priesthood, accounted a sacrament, nor as “imprinting a char- 
acter.” 

It has been said that, inasmuch as this ordination is necessary 
to empower him to ordain and (ordinarily) to confirm, so that 
without the bishop no one can be received into the ministry or 
even into full communion with the Church, the question as to 


“Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent;” “Catechism of the Coun- 
cil of Trent” (E. T. by J. Donovan); “The Catholic Encyclopedia” (in 
process of publication), Art. Bishop, and others. 

“Wherefore the Holy Synod declares that, besides the other ecclesiastical 
degrees, bishops, who have succeeded to the place of the Apostles, principally 


_ belong to this hierarchical order [that of priesthood].” (Decrees of the 
- Council of Trent, 23d Session, ch. 4.) 


“The order of priesthood, although essentially one, has different degrees 
of dignity and power. The first is confined to those who are simply called 
Priests. . . . The second is that of Bishops. . . . The third degree 


is that of Archbishop. . . . Patriarchs hold the fourth place. 


Superior to all these is the Sovereign Pontiff.” (“Catechism of Council of 


Trent,’ On Sacrament of Orders.) Elsewhere this Catechism speaks of 
' priesthood as the sacrament of orders “in its highest degree.” 


458 Christianity as Organized *% 


whether the episcopate should be reckoned a Holy Order or sim- 
ply an order of jurisdiction would seem to be a question 0: 
name only." But in point of fact it is not such a question. Be- 
cause, according to definition, a Holy Order is an order which 
confers grace with reference to celebrating Mass, and this grace 
having been received in its fullness at ordination to the priest- 
hood none of it can be received at the subsequent ordination 
to the episcopacy. Therefore, the priesthood must be th 
highest Holy Order, and the episcopacy not a Holy Order at 
all. 

Even the pope, then, can stand no higher in Holy Orders than 
the priesthood. He is the Chief Priest, the Pontiff. Indeed, it 
may be that when elected he is not a priest at all, but only a dea- 
con—as in former times was now and then the case; or he may 
be but a layman, which has occurred in three instances.” It is 
true that in such cases he will have the diaconate, the priesthood, 
the episcopate, as may be needed, conferred in rapid succession 
upon him. But even before this is done he is a real pope. Th 
whole power of ruling, judging, and teaching is upon him; only 
the sacerdotal functions are wanting. Shall this be called an 
exception to the rule that the Roman Catholic layman is not per- 
mitted to take part in the government of his Church? 

One of the conspicuous administrative adjuncts of the papal 
theocracy is the celibacy of the priest. The enforcement of this 
state as a law may be dated in the pontificate of the Pope Hilde- 
brand (1073-1085). Before his time sacerdotal celibacy was 
far from universal; but through the influence of this determined 
and ruthless pontiff it came to be observed everywhere in the 
West. It is held not as a doctrine, or article of faith, but as a 
matter of discipline. The Council of Trent, indeed, in two of its 
canons pronounces an anathema upon those who say that priests 
or monks may contract a valid marriage, or who say that it is 
not better and more blessed to remain in celibacy than to enter 
the state of matrimony; but it does not define sacerdotal celibacy 


Gore, “Church and Ministry,” p. 105, n. 
*Stanley, “Christian Institutions,” p. 238. 


ee ee ee ee a eS a 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 459 


as a doctrine.” Hence the ordination of married men to the 
priesthood might be permitted in the West, as it is in fact in the 
East, under the present doctrinal definitions. 

Of the superior availability of a celibate priesthood for cer- 
tain ecclesiastical purposes, there can be no question. The mili- 
tary chief prefers the unmarried soldier. Recruiting officers of 
the American army advertise for “unmarried men.” The fewer 
family affections and interests, the better. Let the army have 
the undivided interest and attention of its soldiers, so as to be- 
come the best possible fighting machine. So likewise with the 
soldier of the papal army. He must be free to move here or 
there and to do this or that, without the “impedimenta” of wife 
and children. Let him renounce the endearments and responsi- 
bilities of a home. Let the Church be his home, his household, 
his all. So, it is hoped, will he become more whole-hearted and 
obedient in the service of his chief. 

But so also will that which, left where the Master and his 
Apostles left it, may be in individual instances a blessed and 
abundantly useful state, become, when hardened into an eccle- 
siastical law, and especially when conjoined with the confes- 
sional, a source of injury and corruption which far outbalance 
its benefits.” It is not primarily a question of ecclesiastical power, 
but of the kingdom of God. 

“T incline to the belief,’ says Cardinal Gibbons, “that, under 
God, the Church has no tower of strength more potent than the 
celibacy of her clergy.”* That she has no more potent source of 
moral impurity and contamination in her ministry may be be- 
lieved upon equally reasonable and historic grounds. 

Nor can there be the shadow of a doubt that the fine qualities 
of personal purity, sympathy, insight into human nature, human- 
ness, unselfishness are strengthened and developed in the Chris- 
tian ministry by the home life in holy matrimony. 


*Session XXIV., Canons ix., x. 

The opposite view is taken, but does not seem to be well sustained, by 
Lea, “History of Sacerdotal Celibacy,” pp. 640-642, n. 

*Matt. xix. 3-12; 1 Cor. ix. 5; 1 Tim. iii. 2; Heb. xiii. 4. 

*“The Faith of Our Fathers,” p. 416. 


460 Christianity as Organized 


7. AUDACITY OF THE PAPAL CLAIM. 


One is dazed at the awful audacity of the papal claim—‘the 
corrupt and terrible simplicity of Rome.” But the case is some- 
what relieved by the consideration that no single mind conceived 
it and no single generation dared to set it forth. It would in- 
deed be the crudest of unhistoric fancies to suppose that some 
one man on some one day rose up and grasped all at once the 
stupendous investiture of authority that is now represented by 
the name of a Hildebrand or a Pius X. The usurpation has 
been shared by many minds and by successive ages. We could 
hardly think of any man standing alone and calmly pronouncing 
the curses of an ecumenical council; but a man will sit side by 
side with a thousand others, to deliberate and vote, to represent 
a constituency, to obey his superiors, and will yield to what may 
seem to be the logic of events, and so agree to conciliar decrees. 
In like manner the bishops of Rome, accepting as an inheritance 
the claims and aspirations of their predecessors, add something 
thereto, sustained by the approval of many scholars and eccle- 
siastic leaders, from time to time. Verily it requires courage 
to walk alone; but what can one not do when supported by sym- 
pathy, companionship, public opinion, the spirit of the body to 
which one belongs? 

Again, there lies heavy upon every human soul the burden of 
personal religious responsibility. But the papist loses somewhat 
of its painfulness. It is not the habit of his life to think and 
act for himself in the matter of religion. That is too much: 
who is he that he shall undertake the tremendous task? Let him 
escape from himself. He will make the Church a confessor and 
commit both judgment and conscience to its keeping. It is the 
lesson he learned and the spirit he received in childhood. For to 
most of its advocates the Roman Catholic faith has been, through 
many generations, an inheritance, with all the sacred and pow- 
erful associations of that great word. “I have imbibed her doc- 
trine,”’ says Cardinal Gibbons in the Introduction to “The Faith 
of Our Fathers,” “with my mother’s milk. I have made her his- 
tory and theology the study of my life. . . . It isto mea 


ee ee eS le ee 


oF 


The Episcopal Idea: Patriarchal, Imperial, Papal 461 


duty and labor of love to speak the truth concerning my ven- 
erable mother, especially as she is so much maligned in our 
day.” Thus is such a one led to profess the faith of his fathers, 
and to do his little part, under the pressure of their spirit and 
authority, to fransmit it to succeeding generations. A powerful 
advocate, in its way, is the imagination of the heart. 

But the historic papacy calls for support in Scripture, in rea- 
son, and in primitive Christian history, with nothing but echo as 
an answer. Because it has not been through the operation of 
such forces as Scripture or reason or primitive Christian history, 
but in defiance of them, that it has grafted its awful weight upon 
the Church of Christ. By motives and under conditions similar 
to those through which, during so much of this world’s tragic 
history, political despotism has become a possibility and a fact, 
must this greatest of spiritual despotisms be explained. Out of 
priestly assumption, the love of rule, the powerfully suggestive 
example of political Rome, and a false view of the Church’s 
economy, on the part of the priest, and out of intellectual in- 
ertness, spiritual ignorance, weakness of will, and that perverted 
respect for instituted authority which makes it a substitute for 
truth and life, on the part of the people, has it arisen and per- 
sisted. 


V. 


THE EPISCOPAL IDEA: SCRIPTURAL, EXPEDIENT 
—EARLIER FORMS. 


Is it inevitable that bishops should put forth unfounded claims 
to rulership and spiritual power in the Church of God? Can no 
succession of men be safely charged with so high and responsi- 
ble an office as the episcopate, and no church with the duty of 
restraining it within the true and scriptural limitations? Un- 
doubtedly the bestowal of extraordinary authority and oppor- 
tunity of official influence is attended with extraordinary risk. 
For the highest points of an organization are those which expose 
it to the gravest perils: they stand nearest the electric storms 
The human body would be less liable to fatal injury if it were 
organized without a brain. The most hazardous office in a re- 
public is that of president, and in an army that of commander- 
in-chief. As is the effectiveness of use, so is the destructiveness 
of abuse. 

If, then, in the case of the episcopate, its use be inseparable 
from the serious abuses by which it has so often been dishon- 
ored, if all the efficiency it can add to the Church and all the 
perils it can forefend are outweighed by the episcopal peril it- 
self, the part of wisdom would doubtless be to do without the 
office. Better forego its great possible advantages than suffer 
the equally great perversions to which it is liable. 

Happily, however, such is not the alternative. As more than 
one illustrative example has proved, the idea of episcopal govern- 
ment may be safeguarded against prelatic and hieratic encroach 
ments, and the venerable title of bishop, though “soiled by all 
ignoble use,’ may be borne equitably and nobly. The Apostles 


have genuine successors in our own age.” 


“When a search is being made for scriptural precedents or hints in favor 
of episcopacy, the position of the Apostles with reference to deacons and 


(462) 


—_— 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier 463 


Let us make note of certain forms in which the idea of a 
scriptural and expedient episcopate has found historic expres- 
sion. 


I. ORIGIN OF THE EPISCOPATE IN THE EVANGELICAL 
LUTHERAN CHURCH. 


It was a fundamental principle of the Lutheran Reformation 
that all ecclesiastical power inheres in local churches, or congre- 
gations. The purpose of a church is to minister the word of 
God and the sacraments; and any church has the right to elect 
and ordain its own pastor, who thus becomes its official organ 
for the accomplishment of this purpose. In brief, it has author- 
ity from God to do in its sphere whatever may be done by the 
universal Church. Ministers and people are in exactly the same 
sense a priesthood unto God, being higher or lower in office only, 
not in spiritual power. 

Hence no higher ecclesiastical authority than that of the con- 
gregation is necessary to ordination to the Christian ministry. 
“Tf any pious laymen were banished to a desert,” says Luther,’ 
“and having no regularly constituted priest among them, were to 
agree to choose to that office one of their own number, married 
or unmarried, this man would be as truly a priest as if he had 
been consecrated by all the bishops in the world.” 

Thus far the organizing principle must be characterized as 
pure congregationalism. But it was also held that no specific 
form of organization has been prescribed in the New Testament; 
that therefore the Christian congregations are not bound to stand 
independent of one another, but may, if they choose, organize 
themselves under a common representative government; that 


presbyters will not be overlooked by those who are on the watch for inti- 


_ mations of the mind of the Spirit; but to affirm, as Cyprian does, that the 


Apostles were formally bishops, is to speak without the warrant of Scrip- 


_ ture, and in forgetfulness of the essential points of distinction between the 


Apostolic office and that of a bishop in later times.” (Litton, “The Church 
of Christ,” p. 284.) 

*In an “Appeal to His Imperial Majesty and to the Christian Nobility of 
the German Nation,” in the year 1520. (D’Aubigné, “History of the Ref- 


_ ormation” (1849), Vol. I., pp. 476, 477.) 


464 Christianity as Organized 


moreover, as a matter of order, efficiency, and Christian frater- 
nity, they ought to do so." 

Now of the government that arose under the influence of these 
ideas, one feature was an episcopate. For the Lutheran Refor- 
mation was conservative, not revolutionary. Luther would de- 
stroy nothing except what was subversive of God’s word. Apart 
from this conservative spirit, indeed, both Luther and Melanchthor 
were inclined to favor the episcopate as supplying a real need 
church government.” The three Roman Catholic bishops, there 
fore, who in Germany embraced the reformed doctrines, were 
permitted to retain their sees, as spiritual rulers; and evangelical 
bishops were also appointed—one, Nicolas of Amsdorf, installed 
by Luther himself, and another, George of Anhalt, by Luther 
and Melanchthon. | 

This episcopal office, however, did not prove to be permanent. 
It was overborne and allowed to lapse, under the ecclesiastical 
power of the civil rulers, “the episcopate of the prince.’* An¢ 


“As order is necessary to the prosperity of every associate body, and a 
Jesus Christ has left no entire, specific form of government and discipline 
for his Church, it is the duty of every individual church to adopt such regu- 
lations as appear to them most consistent with the spirit and precepts ol 
the New Testament, and best calculated to subserve the interests of tht 
Church of Christ. 

“And as men exercising the right of private judgment agree in the opinion 
that Christianity requires a social connection among its professors, ; 
reason dictates that those holding similar views of faith and practice shoul 
associate together; that it is their duty to require for admission to churel 
membership among them, or for induction into the sacred office, and for con- 
tinuance in either, such terms as they deem most accordant with the pre 
cepts and spirit of the Bible. . 

“Upon the broad basis of these principles was the Evangelical Lutherat 
Church founded, immediately after the Reformation. Adhering to the sam 
principles, the Church in America is governed by three Judicatories: 
Council of each individual church, the District Synods, . . . and on 
General Synod.” (Formula of Government of the Evangelical Luthera 
Church, Ch. I., sec. 5, 6, 7.) 

4Giesler, “Church History,” Vol. IV., sec. 46. 

s“According to Luther, it is the duty of the princes to use their authorit 
in religious matters as well as in all other matters pertaining to the welfare 
of their subjects. . . . Thus the prince was, by virtue of his positic 
. . . the general superintendent or bishop in his dominions. 


{ 
| 
{ 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptwral—Earlier 465 


here is shown the unhappy flaw in the Lutheran church-building. 
It began with evangelical liberty in both organization and doc- 
trine; but soon degenerated, as to organization, into forms of 
political expediency; or, as has been said, “it began in ideas and 
ended in force.” Rulers of the State became overseers of the 
flock of Christ. We are told, indeed, that this was a necessity of 
the times, to prevent the overthrow of the great Reformer’s work 
by the compact and powerful hierarchy of Rome, with its polit- 
ical allies. Governments were arrayed, with scepter and sword, 
against the gospel. If then other governments were ready to 
organize, defend, and maintain it, why not accept their services, 
even at the cost of giving them authority to rule the organized 
Christianity which they had saved? Either that or the violent 
suppression of Protestantism at its very outset—thus it has been 
argued—was the alternative. 

But if so, we must believe it a most unhappy necessity under 
which, in that period of storm and stress, the less of two such 
evils was chosen. Because, on the one hand, there can be no 
doubt that the “religious” wars which followed had a most har- 
dening effect upon the mind and spirit of the age; and, on the 
other, the best that can be hoped for from the rule of the State 
over the Church is to secure a uniform ecclesiastical condition, to 
the injury, as the history of Christendom has repeatedly shown, 
of genuine Christian faith and experience. Conformity will take 
the place of piety, and confession make light of conviction. Con- 
science will bow the knee to the Baal of political power. Let Ju- 
dah, at war with Israel, call for the aid of Assyria, and she may 
expect to purchase victory at the price of some form of vassalage 
to her powerful ally. 

The main features of the episcopacy, however—those, namely, 
of ordination, visitation, and general superintendence of the 
churches—have been perpetuated by the Lutheran Church of 
Germany unto the present time in the office of Superintendent.’ 


this is the origin of the German State Churches.” (Nuelsen, “Luther the 
Leader,” p. 179.) 
*The views of the Lutheran theologians with respect to the episcopacy are 
30 
v 


466 Christianity as Organized 


The Superintendent is the executive officer of the Consistory, 
which is a body of ministers and laymen appointed by the civil 
ruler to take general charge of all ecclesiastical matters. | 

In Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and some other Europea n 
countries, the Lutheran Church has always had a properly epis- 
copal government. In Sweden there seems to be no doubt that, 
like the Church of England, it has kept up the line of succession 
unbroken from the Roman Catholic bishops. Nowhere, how- 
ever, has it regarded this or any other specific form of organi- 
zation as mandatory or essential. Governmental forms are 
classed with the externalities and not with the essentials of the 
Church. Otherwise, no doubt, the Lutheran Churches generally 
in Europe and America would acquire, as they might so easily 
do, a line of ministerial ordinations from the succession of bish- 
ops in Sweden—or would have done so long ago.” 

It should be added that in European Lutheranism, contrary to 
its original principle, the laity have very little share in govern- 
ment. 


2. ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH 
IN AMERICA. 


In America Lutherans appeared in considerable numbers at 


indicated in the Confession presented by certain German princes and the 
magistrates of two imperial cities to the Emperor at the Diet of Augsburg, 
in 1530: “Now our meaning is not to have rule taken from the Bishops; b 
this one thing only is requested at their hands, that they would suffer the 
gospel to be purely taught, and that they would relax a few observance 
which cannot be held without sin.” (Augsburg Confession, Part II., Art. 7.) 


readily avail themselves of its benefits,” (Prof, E. J, Wolf, in “Church 
Reunion,” p. 98.) , 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier 467 


ble. Was this a defective inheritance from their honored found- 
er? It is certain, at any rate, that even the greatest of prophet- 
teachers or leaders transmit their defects and errors, as well as 
that which is wise and powerful and good, to succeeding gener- 
ations. He who should refuse a position of leadership till prac- 
tically sure that his work will suffer no discount and result in no 
harm or loss must refuse unto the end. Luther was not the 
same strong and indomitable path-breaker in matters of organi- 
zation as in religious liberty and personal Christian faith. What 
wonder, then, if his American followers should have seen their 
way less clearly here than in some other directions? At least 
such was the fact. In the language of one of its present-day 
theologians, “Lutheranism in this country was for a century, if 
not ‘void,’ yet ‘without form,’ and ‘darkness’ brooded over its 
chaotic state. There was no organism: Lutherans were here, 
but hardly a Lutheran Church.”* But a better day was dawn- 
ing, which has long since brightened over the land. With the 
important negative advantage of freedom from any alliance with 
the State, this evangelical Church has had untrammeled oppor- 
tunity to develop itself organically after its own ideals. So, it 
has vested much power in the congregation, and, following the 
example of the Reformed Church, has universally adopted syn- 
odical government. No distinct episcopal office has been insti- 
tuted. But it has been made the duty of presidents of synods 
or of conferences, either personally or through others author- 
ized by them, to ordain and install ministers, make visitations to 
the churches, and perform similar acts of general superintend- 
ence. A more fully developed government—which, in the opin- 


1E. J. Wolf, Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Art. “The Lutheran Church.” 
“Organization,” says Professor Wolf in this same article, “has never been a 
distinguishing glory of Lutheranism.” 

2“Tt is their [the presidents of synods’] duty to preside at synodical meet- 
ings, to present matters that require action, to propose candidates to vacant 
congregations, to perform or authorize the performance of official synodical 
acts, such as ordination, installation, visitation, etc. (though these latter 
functions are often specially assigned to the presidents of conferences), to 
execute discipline, and in general to be advisers of the synodical congre- 
gations.” (The Lutheran Cyclopedia, Art, “Presidents of Synods,”) 


468 Christianity as Organized 


ion of some of its friends, would add strength to this “Church — 
of the Reformation”—might assign such duties to a special su-_ 
perintendent, and make them, together with the preaching of the © 
gospel, his chief or only official work.” But thus far in its his- 
tory American Lutheranism has been distinguished by the strong — 
and steady emphasis which it has laid upon liturgy, sacraments, 
and forms of doctrine, rather than by its forms of government. — 

Some of the Lutheran synods, or groups of churches, are in- — 
dependent—according to recent statistics, no fewer than twenty-— 
four.” But the large majority are organized under one or an-_ 
other of the four higher representative bodies: The General Syn- — 
od, The General Council, The General Synod of the South, and 
The Synodical Conference. It is the organization of the churches 
under the General Synod, which, however, does not materially 7 
differ from that which obtains under the other general governing 
bodies, that will here be noted: . 


There are three classes of church officers—pastors, elders, and deacons. 
Pastors are elected by the congregation, and are held amenable for their — 
conduct to the Synod of which they are members. All ministers are of one © 
and the same order. They are licensed and ordained by the Ministerium; or, © 
in Districts in which no Ministerium is held, by the Synod. A licentiate has 
authority to baptize and to administer the Lord’s Supper, as well as to prea 
and to conduct public worship. 
Elders are assistants of the pastor in government, discipline, and the 
general work of the church. 
Deacons assist the pastor at the Lord’s Supper, attend to the wants of 
the poor, and administer the temporal concerns of the church. Both elders 
and deacons are elected by the people, and may not serve less than two years — 
or more than eight without reélection. 
The Church Council is composed of the pastor, who is ex officio its chair- 
man, the elders, and the deacons of a particular church. It is the function 


1“Their rights [those of the Superintendents of the Lutheran Church i 
Germany] are constitutionally assigned to presidents of conferences and 
synods in America. What is essential in episcopal functions is perhaps best 
preserved by separate existence, which must be well guarded constitutionally 
against Anglicanism and Romanism—i. e., wrong opinions of governme bi 
succession, and historic value and position.” (The Lutheran Cyclopedia, — 
Art. “Bishops.” ) ‘a 

?According to the census of 1890, there were also 231 independent Lutheran 
congregations. (Wright, “Practical Sociology,” p. 74.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier 469 


of the Council to receive members by vote into the church, and to exercise 
discipline in the form of admonition, suspension, and expulsion, and in gen- 
eral to care for the interests of the congregation. Any member may appeal 
from an unsatisfactory decision of the Council in his case to the Synod. 

Conferences are meetings of the ministers within certain Districts into 
which a synod may be divided, for the purpose of preaching, consultation, 
and attention to any business that shall be referred to them either by the 
Synod or by a local congregation. 

The Ministerium consists of the ordained ministers of a Synod, and may 
be convened either during the session of a Synod or at any other time. Its 
chief duty is to license and ordain ministers. 

The Synod is composed of all the ordained ministers and licentiates, to- 
gether with one lay delegate elected by the Church Council from each pas- 
toral charge, within a certain prescribed District. In addition to its judicial 
duties, it must devise and execute various measures for the furtherance of 
the cause of Christ within its bounds. It meets annually. 

The General Synod is composed of ministerial and lay delegates in equal 
numbers from the Synods. It meets biennially, and its powers are such as 
the following: To review the proceedings of Synods; to provide books of 
worship and catechetical instruction for the Church; to make provision, 
through the creation of Boards of Management and otherwise, for the mis- 
sionary and benevolent enterprises of the Church; to promote harmony 
among the Synods embraced in its jurisdiction; and to be sedulously regard- 
ful of “every casual rise and progress of unity of sentiment among Chris- 
tians in general, in order that the blessed opportunities to promote concord 
and unity, and the interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom, may not pass by 
neglected and unavailing.’”* 


3. RISE OF THE EPISCOPATE AMONG THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN. 


There is even an earlier reformed episcopate than that of the 
Lutherans. Sixteen years before Luther was born the first bish- 
op of the Bohemian Brethren, or the Unity of the Brethren 
(Unitas Fratrum), was consecrated. The Brethren were fol- 
lowers of the noble Bohemian martyr, John Hus. The bloody 
Hussite war, in which Bohemia successfully resisted her Roman- 
ist enemies, had run its course. A national church, the Utra- 
quists, or Calixtines—so called because they restored the cup in 
the Lord’s Supper to the laity—had been established. But this 


1Form of Government of the Evangelical Lutheran Church; The Lutheran 
Cyclopedia, Arts. “Bishop,” “Superintendent,” and the like; Jacobs, “The 
Lutherans,” in American Church History Series. 


470 Christianity as Organized 


church after a time submitted to reconciliation to Rome and be- 
came extremely corrupt in both doctrine and practice. : 

It was under these circumstances that the modest undertaking — 
of the Brethren began. Holding the doctrines of Hus, they pro- 
posed to carry on his work, as the Lord might open the way, ac- 
cepting the Scriptures as their one rule of faith, and maintaining — 
a godly discipline. Near the village of Kunwald, amid the for-— 
ests of a narrow, secluded valley under the shadow of the Gratz — 
Mountains, they found a place of retreat in a perilous time. i 

Their original intention was to form not a separate church, — 
but rather a society in the Established Church. In the course of — 
ten years, however, a synod was held in which a body of princi- : 
ples was adopted, and the determination reached to withdraw — 
from the national Establishment and form an independent or- — 
ganization. 

The ministers whom they elected received ordination from two 
Waldensian bishops, who had been ordained to their office by | 
bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.* So, without prelatic or — 
sacerdotal motive, but simply as a matter of order and expe- — 
diency, this new line of Christian ministers put itself in connec- ~ 
tion with the historic line of tactual succession in the Church of j 
the Waldenses and of Rome.” 

Now what was the form of organization thus effected? It 
was that of an episcopate, together with an Ecclesiastical Coun- 
cil: five bishops (one being recognized as primate, or chief), and 3 
ten elders, some of whom were ministers and some laymen. ; 


1De Schweinitz, “History of the Unitas Fratrum,’ Ch. XVI. 

2“The Synod was of opinion that in the times of the Apostles there had 
been ro difference between a bishop and a priest, or presbyter, and that — 
therefore the priests then present might proceed to set them apart for the — 
ministry; that, however, in a very early period a distinction had been made, — 
had been kept up by the Church ever since, and must not now be relin-— 
quished; and finally, that the ordination of their pastors ought to be such — 
as the Calixtine and the Roman Catholics would be compelled to acknowl- — 
edge.” (“The Moravian Manual,” pp. Io, 11.) | 

Compare Wesley’s strong preference, in which Asbury and the American i 
Conference shared, to have his preachers episcopally ordained, notwithstand- 
ing his conviction that the apostolic succession was a hopeless “fable.” 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier 47i 


Here, then, was a genuine “reformation before the Reforma- 
tion.” Naturally enough, therefore, when Luther and Calvin ap- 
peared on the scene, their Bohemian forerunners were brought 
into friendly intercourse with them.* And notwithstanding trou- 
bles, within and without, the Unity of the Brethren increased 
and prospered. Crossing the Bohemian border, it planted its 
churches in other countries. By the year 1557 it embraced a 
Province in Bohemia, one in Moravia, and one in Poland, each 
with its bishop and synod, and all three Provinces united in gen- 
eral synodical meetings. Later it gained legal standing—an ac- 
knowledged and influential Church, with theological schools and 
literature, and with many noble families in its membership. 

This was the “Ancient Church.” But its ecclesiastic enemies 
well-nigh swept it out of existence. After a history of a century 
and three quarters, in the Anti-Reformation under Ferdinand I1., 
the Brethren, who meantime had become involyed—not indeed as 
a church but in the person of some of their most prominent and 
politically influential members—in a political revolution, were 
broken up in Bohemia and Moravia by the most pitiless oppres- 
sion. In Poland they maintained themselves a little longer, but 
gradually united with the Reformed Church. The Peace of West- 
phalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years’ War and placed 
the Lutheran and Reformed Churches on the same legal footing 
as the Church of Rome, did not include the Brethren in its pro- 
visions. So their multiplied calamities were greater than they 
could bear; and before the seventeenth century drew to a close, 
as an organization they had ceased to be. 

But now came the period of the “Hidden Seed.” For half 
a century the evangelic faith of the Bohemian fathers lived on, 
here and there, in secret places; and there were witnesses of 
Christ that could not be corrupted nor utterly suppressed. More- 


“At the beginning of Luther’s Reformation they numbered about four 
hundred parishes and two hundred thousand members, were using their own 
Hymnal and Catechism, and employing two printing presses for the spread 
of evangelical literature.” (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Art. “Moravian 
Church.” ) 


= 


) 


Ave Christianity as Organized 


over, there were prophetic spirits who looked forward to a b 
ter time, watchers for the morning when the Lord would restore 
to his suffering people their place and mission in the world. Most 
eminent of these was the aged Bishop John Amos Comenius, 
who revised and published the book of discipline (Ratio Disei- 
plinze) for the use of the resuscitated Church that was to be.” 

The chief agents in the resuscitation of the Unity of the Breth- 
ren were a count and a carpenter. In the early part of the 
eighteenth century the young Count Zinzendorf, on his estate 
of Berthelsdorf in Saxony, had solemnly covenanted to devote 
himself and all that he possessed to the work of the Lord. Not 
far distant lived Christian David, by trade a carpenter, by pro- 
fession a member of the Brethren, and by indubitable divine vo- 
cation an itinerant evangelist. On an evangelistic journey i 
Moravia, Christian David met with certain descendants of 
Brethren who were desirous to find a home where they mig’ 
enjoy the religious liberty which was denied them in their own 
land. Through information given by him, the Count learned 
about these faithful Brethren, and offered them an asylum on 
his estate. “Let as many of your friends as will come hither,” 
he said to Christian David; “I will give them land to build on, 
and Christ will give them the rest.” Here, accordingly, they ~ 
built the village of Herrnhut (in 1722-29), which is even yet the 
ecclesiastical center of the renewed Unity of the Brethren—or, — 
as the Unity is more familiarly called, the Moravian Church.” 

The little Church settlement prospered. German Pietists we 
attracted to it and received as members of the community. 
five years there was a population of about three hundred. The 


1“While Comenius cared for the Brethren of the present, he kept in vie 
the Church of the future also. That such a church would appear, either 
the homes of his fathers, or in a strange land, he confidently hoped; and 
order to prepare for its coming published several works which were to pre- 
serve the doctrines, ritual, and constitution of the ancient Unity.” o- 
Schweinitz, “History of the Unitas Fratrum,” p. 601.) 

2The name “Moravian Church” originated in the fact that the first comers. 
to Zinzendorf’s estate and most of those who came afterwards—in a wor af 
the builders of Herrnhut—were from Moravia. 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier 473 


Ratio Discipline, adopted by a synod of the Brethren a hundred 
years before and revised by Comenius, was accepted as their 
book of government and discipline; the liturgy of their fathers 
was retained; and bishops of the renewed Church were conse- 
crated by two bishops of the old episcopal succession, which had 
been perpetuated during the whole time of the Hidden Seed. 
Their first bishop was David Nitschman. The next was Zinzen- 
dorf himself; and on him the supreme government of the Church 
rested till his death, in 1760. Other bishops were elected as his 
assistants—Peter Bohler, for example, who was connected so 
significantly with the rise of Methodism’—and synods were held 
which were practically under his control. After his death, how- 
ever, the synod took its proper place as the governing body of 
the Church; and a number of bishops and elders, “The Unity’s 
Elders’ Conference,” were elected as a board of administration. 

Zinzendorf’s idea was that of “exclusive” church settlements. 
The State Churches, whether the Evangelical Lutheran, in which 
he himself had been reared, or the Reformed, must not be dis- 
turbed. Nevertheless they included in their membership a great 
many worldly people. Would it not be well, therefore, if at 
various points within their territory thoroughly evangelical com- 
munities might be established, under strict discipline, and kept 
apart from the secular and ungodly world round about them? 
For thus might the spiritually minded cultivate their own spir- 
itual life, and at the same time send out evangelistic messen- 
gers, as witnesses of experimental Christianity, in the communi- 
ties of the State Churches. 

Let no person not of this evangelical and disciplined body be 
permitted to hold property in their villages. Let all material as 
well as spiritual pursuits and affairs be brought under ecclesi- 
astical control. Here let the lamp of truth be kept brightly 
burning for all who might come to rejoice in its light; and from 
hence, with torches kindled in its flame, let its missionaries go 
forth. And so they did, not only among the churches, but afar 


*Snell, “Wesley and Methodism,” pp. 52, 53. 


474 Christianity as Organized 


among the heathen in the darkest and most wretched places of 
the earth. a 

Very attractive to the harassed soul is the thought of “sanc- 
tuary.” Amid the incessant evils and antagonisms of the world, 
who has not felt its charm? One need not be as sad and sus-— 
ceptive as Cowper to dream of a happy seclusion in “some bound- 
less contiguity of shade.” 


Lo, then would I wander far off, 
I would lodge in the wilderness, 
I would haste me to a shelter 
From the stormy wind and tempest.* 
So, sure enough, the monastery rises in the wilderness, and 
opens its door invitingly. So the Pilgrim and the Puritan fa- 
thers in New England said: We have come to this far land for 
freedom and peace, and none but such as are like-minded shall 
dwell among us. So have socialist dreamers, out of heart with 
the imperfect organization and ideals of human society as it is, 
banded together to make the experiment of communistic colo- 
nies—Brook Farms, Harmonists, Amana Societies, and the like. — 
So the peace-loving Quietist is prone, however unintentionally, — 
to form the anti-social habit and walk his little round of life — 
alone. So the devout and dreamy ecclesiastic lives in retreat, 
among his books, in his oratory, friendly perhaps with just a few — 
congenial fellows, and goes forth for brief ministrations only | 
to get back to retirement as soon as conscience will consent. So 4 
it would seem to many a sensitive Christian mind that it were a — 
very heaven on earth to live in a community of Christians only, — 
every house a house of prayer, every neighbor a brother of like ‘ 
faith and experience.” Such as this were to be the Moravian vil- 
lages—and not on the Continent only, but also in England and — : 
America. 


i 


*Psa_ lye 7,8: F 
2“T would gladly have spent my life here in Herrnhut; but my Master — 
calling me to labor in another part of his vineyard, on Monday, 14, I was — 
constrained to take my leave of this happy place; Martin Dober and a few 
others of the brethren walking with us about an hour.” (Wesley’s Journal, | 
August 12, 1738.) ¥ 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier 475 


But such are not the normal situation and surroundings of 
Christ’s militant Church. Its place is in the forefront of the 
hardest battle of the ages. Not the place of its special repre- 
sentatives only, its Twelves or its Seventies, but its own place 
is there. Its Paradise Regained will not be found “‘in retreat.” 
Its “exclusive settlement” is Armageddon. 

Meditation, secret prayer, communion with God, the com- 
munion of saints—these indeed are ever needful. How can the 
Christian life be lived without them? Nevertheless, it is a life 
to be lived among men, in the spirit of human brotherhood and 
witness-bearing for the Lord Jesus Christ. “I pray not that 
thou shouldest take them from the world, but that thou shouldest 
keep them from the evil one.’’ More truly Christian in its idea 
than any safeguarded church village is the “church settlement”’ 
of the modern city. 


Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 
Where men good and bad pass by. 


Shall we think, then, of Zinzendorf’s method as unpractical ? 
Does it go aside from the New Testament method by putting 
the leaven too little in contact with the meal? If not, some other 
reason or reasons must account for the fact that the fair and 
noble Moravian Church presents to-day the singular picture of 
a church with more than fifty-two thousand communicants in 
mission fields and fewer than half that number at home. 

Indeed, another reason has been offered—namely, the lack of 
a distinct effort, through Zinzendorf’s influence and leadership, 
to build up a separate denomination, till the field, especially in 
America, had been preoccupied by other evangelic churches. 
But side by side, at least, with this explanation of meager growth, 
must be noted the mistake of the “exclusive settlement.”’ 

This Church, therefore, is of relative present importance chief- 
ly because of its unparalleled missionary activity, and its long, 
eventful history. It may be recognized as the oldest episcopal 
Protestant Church in the world. It traces its bishops back in 
an apparently unbroken line through the period of the Renewed 


Av6 Christianity as Organized q 


Church, that of the Hidden Seed, and that of the Ancient Chure h, 
to the ordination of Matthias of Kunwald in the year 1467.> 


4. EARLIER AND LATER Moravian EpiscopaL FUNCTIONS. 


The Moravian episcopate, during the period of the Ancient 
Church, and more especially during Zinzendorf’s time, was a 
strong administrative office. Since then its only peculiar func- 
tion seems to have been that of ordaining to the ministry. Bish- 
ops, however, in virtue of their office, have special privileges of 
membership in the governing bodies.” 


The home territory of the Church is divided at the present time into four 
Provinces—namely, the Continental Province, the British Province, the Amer ; 
ican Province, North, and the American Province, South. 

There is a General Synod, which meets normally every ten years. Other 
governing bodies are the Provincial Synod, the District Synod, and a Mis-— 
sion Board to which is committed the supreme administration for missions — 
among the heathen. The executive officers of the General Synod are the © 
Unity’s Elders’ Conference; and of the Provincial Synod, the Provincial © 
Elders’ Conference. Bishops of Mission Provinces are elected by the Gen- © 
eral Synod; of the Home Provinces, by the Provincial Synods. a 

The ministry exists in the three orders of Bishops, Elders, and Deacons. 
The Deacons are authorized to administer both the sacraments; and they — 
are promoted to the presbyterate when appointed to take charge of a con- 
gregation or of some particular department of church work. Brethren in- 


*“The claim of the Unitas Fratrum to a valid episcopacy is important as — 
a historic and not as an essential question. It is not based upon the idea that — 
episcopal ordination is alone legitimate. The Church still occupies the cath- ~ 
olic standpoint of the fathers, upholding fellowship with evangelical Chris- 
tians of every name; the prayer which was fervently uttered, four and a 
quarter centuries ago, amidst the mountains or Reicheneau and in the hamlet 
of Lhota, is still repeated: ‘Unite all the children of God in one spirit’” 
(De Schweinitz, “History of the Unitas Fratrum,” p. 152.) i 

2“Their [the Moravian bishops’] office carries with it no ruling power i , 
the Church. Their special function is ordination of ministers. Their office, 
moreover, is defined to be ‘in a peculiar sense that of intercessors in the ~ 
Church of God” . . . It [the Moravian polity] has allowed the Church — 
to enjoy the advantages of a conferential form of government, giving marked 
preference to the Headship of Jesus Christ over the Church in all its pro- 
Coaue, it has enabled it to recognize the validity of Presbyterian ordina- 
tion.” (Prof. W. N. Schwarze, “The Moravian Church and the Proposals 
of the Lambeth Conference,” in the Church Quarterly Review (Cont 
October, 1909.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Earlier A77 


trusted with the direction of finances may also be ordained to their cfice 
as Deacons—‘“after the Apostolic example.” 

In the forms of worship the golden mean between uniformity and spon- 
taneity has been most excellently observed. The ritual is comparatively brief. 
Much liberty is given for extemporaneous prayer. Prayer meetings and love 
feasts are held. And this church has the distinction of being the first of all 


' the Christian churches to put a hymn book into the hands of its congrega- 


tions—its first hymnal, edited by Bishop Luke and composed of both original 
hymns and translations from the Latin, bearing date of the year 1505.* 


1The Moravian Manual. 


VI. 


a singularly gifted organizer. Not inappropriately did he, to- 
gether with his comrades in the first little brotherhood of whiel 
he became the acknowledged leader—though he was not its o: 
inator—bear the nickname of Methodist. It was preéminently 


his friend and colaborer, George Whitefield: “I should but wea ve 
a Penelope’s web, if I formed societies.” Not so Wesley: he was 
no less a former of societies than a preacher of the gospel. 
ever a man was given to organizing Christianity, his own a 
others’, it was this man. And his web has not yet been un- 
woven. 

Accordingly, in the case of these humble religious inquirers 
in London, a result followed of which neither they nor their 
chosen spiritual guide could have had the slightest prevision. 
He made an arrangement to meet them regularly at a cer 
time and place for prayer and counsel; and this was the be 
ning of the various organizations of the Methodism of to-da 

Nor does there seem to be any good reason to believe that 
these Christian organizations, with their millions of members 
and their world-wide work, would ever have come into existence 
but for the life of this one man. Had the overlooked six-year- 
old boy perished in the flames of the Epworth rectory in 1709 
there might well have been an Evangelical Revival of the 
eighteenth century, but that form of Christianity known as 
Methodism would not have been. . 


(478) 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 479 


It is true that, under the directive and enabling hand of God, 
the progress of the world is chiefly through the spirit of an age. 
The advance is made through ideas, convictions, aspirations, and 
endeavors that are somehow shared by many men in many cir- 
cumstances and positions. It is a slow, evolutionary though at 
the same time personal process. The creative forces come into 
ascendency through insensible increments from numberless 
sources and periods of time. The individuals in whom they ap- 
pear most conspicuously are not so much their originators as 
their products and representatives. Therefore it is not difficult 
to imagine, for example, that Christianity would have become 
the religion of the Roman empire under some later emperor, if 
Constantine had not espoused its cause; that there would have 
been an evangelical reformation, if Martin Luther had never 
lived; that America would have been discovered, if Columbus 
had suffered shipwreck on his first voyage; that the American 
Colonies would have won their independence, if George Wash- 
ington had fallen in the battle of the Monongahela; that the 
printing press and the telephone would have been invented, if 
Gutenberg’s and both Bell’s and Edison’s experiments had proved 
failures. These men were indeed opulent and original forces 
in human affairs; but there are men who were more distinctly 
personal in their achievements—men without whom, so far as 
we can judge, the great movements for which their names stand 
would never have taken place. Such a man in the history of re- 
ligion was Mahomet; such a one in political history was Charle- 
magne; and such a one in modern Christian organization was 


John Wesley. 


I. ORIGIN OF INSTITUTES OF METHODISM. 


Through the labors of Wesley and Whitefield, the itinerancy 
as a method of an evangelistic ministry received an unprecedent- 
ed development." For Methodism, we have to remember, was 


1One hardly needs to be reminded that an itinerant ministry was no 
really new thing at this time. Sundry more or less significant examples of 
it may be noted; such as, in the first years of Christianity, that of the 


480 Christianity as Organized 


aggressive, and the itinerancy is distinctively a policy of aggres- 
sion. English Christianity in the eighteenth century was on 
the defensive; and Wesley’s plan of defense—so far as he had 
any—was that of a well-planned and untiring attack. Great 
was the success of it. Converts were won and societies gath- 
ered throughout the land. In the fellowship of these societies 
preaching gifts appeared: impulse of utterance took the form of 
exhortation and the pungent application of the gospel—in such 
men as John Nelson and various others. Wesley, after some 
hesitation, getting the better of early prejudices and rigid church- 
manship, gave his sanction to the lay preachers and undertook 
the direction of their labors. Like him, they must be itinera er 
going to and fro from congregation to congregation, from neigh- 
borhood to neighborhood, from circuit to circuit. 

But after conquest comes culture. It has been said: “The 6 
sword may conquer lands, but it is the plow that retains them? 
In the metaphor of the apostle Paul, the Christian people are 
“God’s tilled field.”* The evangelist, wielding the word of God 
as a sword, may win them; but it is only through continuous 
and careful spiritual husbandry that they can be held and mad e 
rich in “fruit unto holiness.” How, then, could such a result as 
this be reached under the Wesleyan system of evangelism? 
Partly through what pastoral preaching and spiritual care the 
traveling evangelist was able to give; but chiefly through 
development of a new class of caretakers. Men originally ap- 
pointed in the local societies to collect the weekly dues were also 
made soon afterwards spiritual overseers. They became the 
pastors of the people—each with a very little flock which he 
could watch over and care for individually. a 

Was it well that plain, unschooled men should be thus intrust- 


9 6 


Apostles and their fellow-preachers, and of the “apostles,” “prophets,” 
“teachers” of the sub-apostolic age; in the Middle Ages, that of the An 
Saxon monks who were sent out by the bishop from the monasterie 
which they had their training and their home (Southey, “Life of Wesley,’ f 
I. 262), and the Dominican and Franciscan brothers; in later times, Wyeliee 
poet priests.” a 
"1 Cor, ili, 9, margin, 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 481 


ed with the spiritual care of other plain, unschooled men? Be- 
fore making answer let us remember that the young Sunday- 
school teacher may more readily succeed than the better instruct- 
ed older one in winning the attention and the heart of the young; 
that the native Christian worker may gain a hold upon men of 
his own race and former faith such as would be impossible to the 
foreign missionary; in a word, that the most welcome human 
help is often not that which is sent from afar, or that which is 
somehow dropped down from a height, but that which is given 
by a brother walking with us in our own ways of everyday life. 

So the numerous Methodist under-shepherds were appointed ; 
and this was the beginning of the class-meeting. 

During the first half century of their existence, the Methodist 
societies of Great Britain knew but a single ruler. All offices, 
rules, and regulations were of Wesley’s own institution. In him 
rested the power to admit into membership in the societies and 
to exclude therefrom; to appoint and remove stewards; to re- 
ceive preachers and to appoint them to their circuits or dispense 
with their assistance. Briefly, in him personally was to be found 
all legislative, judicial, and executive authority. His visitations 
and oversight of the societies were an almost incredible example 
of faithful, untiring activity. And this was the beginning of 
the Methodist episcopacy. 

A few clergymen of the English Church sympathized with 
Wesley from the outset in his evangelistic undertakings, and 
rendered him more or less assistance. In the year 1744 he in- 
vited some of these and some of his own lay preachers to meet 
him in consultation about the work in which they were so 
deeply interested. In all, there were six clergymen and four lay 
preachers who thus met together. This was the beginning of 
the Methodist Conference. 

Such a meeting of preachers was held annually from that 
time forth. And it was literally and solely a conference. Ques- 
tions were proposed by Wesley as president, and a free inter- 
change of views asked for; but there was no voting. As the 
abbot of a Benedictine monastery—if one may go so far afield 


ail 


482 Christianity as Organized 


to find an analogue—must call a council of the monks for ¢ 
sultation on all important matters of business, and then t 
upon himself the responsibility of the decision, so the Chair in a 
Methodist Conference, wishing to be advised, not governed, de- 
cided every question on his own responsibility. Consciously or 
unconsciously, the military idea dominated Wesley’s administra- 
tive thought. He was commander of an evangelic army: the 
conference was simply his council of war. He continued to ap- 
point the preachers to their fields of labor and to remove them 
from: place to place, as seemed expedient. The chapels which 
began to be built were deeded to him as a lifetime trust. All 
things were in the hands of the peerless providential Leader, — 
under whose direction the movement began, and whose absolute 
authority was resigned only on the bed of death. 

What then? A self-perpetuating legal conference—the “Legal 
Hundred”—which should succeed to the trusteeship of the So-- 
ciety’s property, and as far as possible take the place of the de- 
parted patriarchal ruler, had already been provided for. This 
Conference came at once into power; and it has been the goy- — 
erning body of the Wesleyan Methodists unto the present time. | 


2. GROWTH OF METHODIST ORGANIZATION. 


It must not be forgotten that during Wesley’s lifetime the — 
Methodist societies, or, as they were called collectively, the Unit- 
ed Society, were not in the full sense of the word a church. 
They were rather, like the early Moravians, a religious guild or 
fraternity of Christian men and women banded together for 
mutual watch-care and encouragement in working out their sal-— 
vation. It was their purpose and rule to observe the ordinances — 
and as far as possible with a good conscience to obey the canons 
of their national Church. Wesley strenuously resisted the idea — 
of their separation from it, because it might both serve them 
and be served by them. For the most part contemned by its 4 
authorities, they were, nevertheless, a body of life-bearers which — 
it greatly needed. For the Church of England in that age 

; 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 483 


seemed unable to find any better motto for its own activities 
than No enthusiasm. It had grown strangely inert. 


Let us alone. What pleasure can we have 
To war with evil? Is there any peace 
In ever climbing up the climbing wave? 


It was Wesley’s aim, accordingly, to vitalize and strengthen 
the existing Establishment, to call it forth into the thick of the 
“war with evil,’ and not to form anew church. Hence he habit- 
ually spoke of his followers as “the people called Methodists”— 
simply a “people”? and simply “so-called”? Methodists. 

But in the latter years of his life, after making provision for 
an independent and fully equipped Church in America, he did 
set apart several of his preachers in Scotland and England to the 
office of presbyter, for the administration of the sacraments, and 
one, Alexander Mather, to the higher office of superintendent. 
It would seem that by this time he saw the inevitableness of a 
separation from the Church of England, and did what he could 
in the most appropriate and orderly manner—though inconsist- 
ently with his membership and office of presbyter in that Church 
—to provide for the administration of the sacramental ordi- 
nances in the prospective Church of the Methodists. 

If, however, this be the correct interpretation of Wesley’s 
course of action, the Conference after his death did not fully 
carry out his design. It did authorize the administration of the 
sacraments in such societies as voted, through their stewards, 
class leaders, and trustees of chapels, to have them. And by this 
act it broke the connection between the members of these socie- 
ties and the Established Church, to which most of them, if in 
any proper sense church members, belonged. Thus the whole 
United Society became, in the course of about twenty years, a 
fully constituted church; for it was already ‘“‘a congregation of 
faithful men, in the which the pure word of God was preached,” 
and it now had also “the sacraments duly administered accord- 
ing to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that are of necessity 
requisite to the same.”’ But twenty years more passed before 


484 Christianity as Organized 


(in 1836) it ordained its ministers by the imposition of hands. 
And as to the Superintendency, it never gave any recognition to 
such an office. 

The government of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the par- 
ent body of English Methodism (the other bodies need not here 
be considered), has become an elaborate and well-compacted sys- 
tem. Not classifiable under any one of the three generally rec- 
ognized types of ecclesiastical polity, it shows a real affinity with 
both the Presbyterian and the Episcopal. As to ministerial or- 
ders, it is wholly Presbyterian. But it also includes, in its Presi- 
dent of the Conference, in its Superintendent of the Circuit, and 
especially in its Chairman of the District, some genuine features 
of the episcopate. 


The Conference (or Legal Conference, or Legal Hundred), which is the 
one legislative body and the supreme court, meets annually. When vacancies 
occur in its membership, they are filled, partly by seniority and partly by 
election, from the whole body of ministers. But the Conference, in what is 
called its Pastoral Session, associates with itself certain other ministers, who 
are appointed by the District Synods; and it is in this Pastoral Session that 
men are nominated to fill the vacancies—the nominations being confirmed by 
the Conference itself. 

There is also the Mixed Session, in which the Conference sits with a 
number of other ministers and an equal number of laymen—all appointed 
by the District Synods. 

The duration of a Conference Session is limited to three weeks—the first 
week being given to the Pastoral Session, and the remainder of the time 
to the Mixed Session. Business pertaining more particularly to the office of 
the ministry—such as ordinations, the division of circuits, and the stationing 
of ministers—is transacted in the Pastoral Session; business of a more 
general character—such as home and foreign missions, chapel funds, educa- 
tion, temperance—in the Mixed Session. 

The Conference sits only in either the Pastoral or the Mixed Session— 
never alone. But no action is valid unless approved by the Conference it- 
self.* 


1It would seem indeed that according to the present practice the Confer- 
ence does very little legislation’of any kind except at the suggestion or in 
ratification of the action of the Pastoral or the Mixed Session. “It exercises 
no independent power. It is practically a mere registering machine, the in- 
strument by which the decisions of the Conference as a whole [in Pastoral 
or Mixed Session] are translated into legal terms.” (Fitchett, “Wesley and 
His Century,” p. 399.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 485 


The territory of the Conference is divided into Districts, over each of 
which is placed an administrative body known as the District Synod. It is 
composed of all the ministers and certain lay officers of the District—the lay- 
men considerably exceeding the ministers in number. It meets twice a year, 
and its principal meeting, which is in the month of May, lasts from two to 
five days. At this meeting there is first a ministerial session in which, among 
many other items of business, the character and work of the ministers and 
Conference probationers of the District pass under review, candidates for 
the ministry are examined, the increase or decrease in church membership is 
noted, and reports of home missions are received. At the close of this ses- 
sion there is a joint meeting of ministers and laymen for financial business. 
The other semiannual meeting of the Synod is in the month of September, 
and is wholly occupied with matters of finance. 

All the pastoral charges are arranged in the form of Circuits, each em- 
bracing several societies, or churches—in some cases the number reaching 
as high as twenty-five or thirty. The Circuit has its Quarterly Meeting, 
consisting of the stewards, the class leaders, the local preachers of one year’s 
standing, the trustees who are members of the church within the circuit, 
and representatives of the Sunday schools. It is presided over by the Super- 
intendent, or minister in charge of the circuit. In these Quarterly Meetings 
the statistics of membership, the amount of money paid by the classes, and 
the amount received by the ministers on account of salary, are reported, 
and the whole work of the Circuit is considered. The Quarterly Meetings 
of many Circuits number more than a hundred members—of some not fewer 
than two hundred. 

Each Society has one or two Society Stewards and one or two Stewards 
for the Poor. These, together with the Class Leaders and certain elected 
representatives of the church membership, constitute the Leaders’ Meeting, 
which is the pastor’s council. Both Stewards and Class Leaders are nomi- 
nated by the Superintendent and elected by the Leaders’ Meeting. Besides 
the Stewards of the Societies there are Circuit Stewards, whose office has 
reference to all the societies of the circuit collectively. 

The President of the Conference is nominated in the Pastoral Session 
and elected by the Conference. His office is for one year only, and he is 
not eligible to reélection within a period of eight years. He is intrusted with 
authority to supply any vacancies that may occur in pastoral charges in the 
interval of the Conference, and with the general oversight of the Church. 
He also conducts the service of ordination, in which, together with certain 
other ministers, he lays his hands upon the head of the candidate for orders. 

Chairmen of Districts are elected by the Conference in its Pastoral Ses- 
sion. It is their duty to convene and preside over District Synods, to act 
as chairmen of various District sub-committees, and under certain circum- 
stances to visit the circuits. The District Chairman has larger powers in 
his sphere than are vested in the President. He is to be “the ear and the 
eye, the hand and the mouthpiece of the District as well as of the Confer- 
ence, in dealing with preachers and people, with ministers and Circuits,” 


486 Christianity as Organized 


In the Superintendent of a Circuit is vested the power to receive persons 
into membership, and to exclude from membership; but only after consulta- 
tion with the Leaders’ Meeting. 

Candidates for the ministry must be first of all recommended by the 
Quarterly Meeting on nomination of the Superintendent. They are then 
examined by the District Synod, and after that by a committee appointed 
by the Conference—the “July Committee,’ which meets annually in London 
and Manchester. Having been accepted by the Conference, the candidate is 
sent to a theological institution for a three years’ course of study—or, if the 
institution be full, he is appointed to a Circuit as a preacher, to serve till a 
vacancy shall occur. At the close of his course of study he is eligible to 
reception as a probationer into the Conference. The period of probation is 
four years; but the last of the three years in the theological institution may 
be accepted as the first year of probation. On the reception of the proba- 
tioner into full membership in the Conference he is ordained elder. There 
is no diaconate. 

Local preachers, who serve without the slightest pecuniary compensation, 
are numerous and active.t They have their places on the plan of the Cir- 
cuit, side by side with the itinerant preachers. A few days before the session 
of the Quarterly Meeting they hold a meeting of their own for Christian ~ 
fellowship and consultation. It is out of their goodly company that the 
ranks of the itinerant preachers are recruited. 

Pastoral appointments are made by the Stationing Committee, which con- 
sists of the President and the Secretary of the Conference, one representa- 
tive from each District, and some other members. The limit of the pastoral 
term is three years—a limit fixed in the Charter of the Legal Hundred, 
which can be changed only by act of Parliament. Three years also must 
elapse before reappointment to the same charge. 

The Stationing Committee has a meeting a week or ten days before the 
session of the Conference, at which it makes out a complete list of appoint- 
ments. These are printed and published before the meeting of the Confer- 
ence, and are also read to the Conference twice, being all this while subject 
to revision. Then a third draft is made and read, which is final.* 


3. OTHER MeEtTHopIst EPISCOPATES. 


The episcopal idea has appeared, in similar forms to those of 
British Methodism, in Canada, the United States, and Japan. 


1Tt is estimated that of the 28,000 sermons preached in the Wesleyan 
pulpits of Great Britain every Sunday fully 20,000 of them are preached by 
18,000 lay preachers. There is no complaint there of a scarcity of preachers 
when the laymen go forth two by two as when our Lord sent out other 
seventy also.” (Bishop E. R. Hendrix, Christian Advocate (Nashville), 
November, 1907.) 

2Williams, “The Constitution and Polity of Wesleyan Methodism.” 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 487 


The Methodist Church (of Canada) is under the supervision 
of one or more Itinerant General Superintendents, who are elect- 
ed by the General Conference for a term of eight years, and 
are eligible for reélection. The General Superintendents “shall 
travel at large throughout the Church, and shall have the general 
oversight of all Church interests and institutions, and do all in 
their power to forward them, and render such service as the 
General Conference shall direct.” They preside over the ses- 
sions of the General Conference, and in the interval between its 
quadrennial sessions, act in various matters, in its name.’ 

In the Methodist Protestant Church episcopal oversight is rep- 
resented by the Presidents of the various Annual Conferences. 

The President is elected annually by the Conference, and is 
eligible for five successive elections. He presides at the sessions 
of the Conference, and during the interim visits the pastoral 
charges, presides at the Quarterly Conferences, makes changes 
with the consent of pastors and people in pastoral appointments 
(these having been made by the Annual Conference), provides 
for the administration of sacraments where necessary, appoints 
missionaries, oversees the work of the pastors.” 

The Methodist Church of Japan (Nippon Methodist Kyok- 
wai) dates the beginning of its history, as an autonomous body, 
in May-June, 1907. Organized by a conference of delegates 
from the Japan Mission Conferences of the two Methodist Epis- 
copal Churches of the United States and the Methodist Church 
of Canada, it has chosen forms of polity similar to the forms of 
these three churches in America. 

The government of the Church is vested in a quadrennial Gen- 
eral Conference composed of equal numbers of ministers and lay- 
men, elected by the ministerial and the lay members, respectively, 
of the Annual Conferences. 

There is a General Superintendent (Kantoku), elected by the 
General Conference—which has power to elect as many as are 


1“The Discipline of the Methodist Church” (1906), pp. 50, 51. 
*“Constitution and Discipline of the Methodist Protestant Church” (1908), 
pp. 28, 29, 120, 121. 


488 Christianity as Organized 


needed from time to time—and intrusted with the same funce- 
tions, though in a somewhat modified form, as those of the gen- 
eral overseers in American Methodism. His term of office is 
eight years, and he is eligible for reélection. 

The territory of the Church is divided into Annual Confer- 
ences and these into Districts. The Districts are under the over- 
sight of Presiding Elders (Bucho). 

The Presiding Elders of each Annual Conference are nomi- 
nated—by ballot and without debate—by the Conference, and 
appointed by the Kantoku. They may be reappointed for four 
successive years; and after four years of service in some other 
position are eligible again for nomination and election as Pre- 
siding Elders. 

The Kantoku also appoints the preachers to their pastoral 
charges and fixes the boundaries of the Districts; but in both 
cases only after consultation with the Presiding Elders. 

The ideal of this little pioneer Church of Jesus Christ in Japan 
is shown in the closing sentence of the Historical Statement pre- 
fixed to its book of Discipline: “The sole object of the rules, reg- 
ulations, and usages of the Nippon Methodist Kyokwai is that 
it may fulfill to the end of time its divine vocation, as a leader 
in evangelization, in all moral and religious reforms, and in 
the promotion of fraternal relations among all branches of the 
Church of Jesus Christ.’” 

And the awakened Island Empire shall wait for His law. 


4. EPISCOPACY THROUGH EVANGELISM. 


Evangelism may easily prove to be incipient episcopacy. The 
Christian preacher, going forth with the word of salvation to 
various communities, will not soon forget those who are led to 
Christ under his ministry; and especially where, as in a mission 
field, new congregations have been gathered. It will be in his 
heart to visit them again, to keep in communication with them, 
to send them such help and such helpers as may be available. So 


“The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church of Japan, 1907 ;” 
“Journal of the First General Conference of the Japan Methodist Church.” 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 480 


the apostle becomes a chief pastor, “Let us return now,” says 
the apostle Paul to Barnabas, after their evangelizing tour 
in Asia Minor, “and visit the brethren in every city wherein 
we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they fare. 

And he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the 
churches.’” 

True, it was to local church officers that the apostle Peter gave 
the charge, “Tend the flock of God which is among you;’” but 
what charge had been given to Peter himself, who was to be an 
itinerant witness-bearer and missioner, and not a local church 
officer? It was the very same, and immediately from the Mas- 
ter’s own lips: “Tend my sheep.”* Such was an Apostle’s epis- 
copate. He cared for the souls and for the multiplying congre- 
gations that had been given him. Absent or present, through 
pen and tongue, he would continue his ministrations to them, as 
God gave ability. The epistles to Timothy and to Titus have 
been called “pastoral; but in a different and deeper sense the 
apostolic epistles generally are pastoral epistles. They are the 
fatherly and authoritative communications of a Christian pastor 
to this or that distant flock. 

This principle of episcopacy through evangelism is not with- 
out its modern exemplifications. Notably illustrated by the 
Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, in Wesley’s re- 
lation to the United Society, it found a similar, though less con- 
spicuous, illustration among the Germans of America in the rise 
of the United Brethren in Christ. 


5. OTTERBEIN AND THE UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST. 


The congregations of this Christian brotherhood began to 
gather, chiefly through the labors and influence of one man, 
Philip William Otterbein, during the latter part of this same 
century. 

Otterbein came to America at the age of twenty-six years as 
a missionary of the Reformed Church in Germany. For the 


tActs xv. 36, 4I. 2Te Pets wer. ®t John xxi. 16. 


490 Christianity as Organized 


last thirty-nine years of his life (1774-1813) he served as pastor 
of what was practically an independent congregation (“The Ger- 
man Evangelical Reformed Church’’) in the city of Baltimore. 
But his connection with the Church of his fathers in which he 
had been born and reared and ordained to the ministry (and of 
which his father, his grandfather, and five of his brothers were 
ministers) was never broken. 

In his earlier ministry, while a pastor in Pennsylvania, Otter- 
bein was led into a clear and satisfying knowledge of the grace 
of God in the forgiveness of sins. The gospel became to him, 
as never before, the power of God unto salvation, and his preach- 
ing a personal and living message. He felt constrained to 
declare it, not to his own congregation only but wherever he 
might gain a hearing. The dearth of vital religion in the 
churches, and the needs of the unevangelized poor, especially 
in rural communities, offered him the opportunity, which 
seemed to impose the obligation, of special evangelistic under- 
takings.” 

Meantime Martin Bohm, a Mennonite preacher, had entered 
upon a similar course of evangelism among the uninstructed and 
the poor. “We are brothers,’”’ exclaimed Otterbein on his first 
meeting with his less cultured but no less gifted and zealous 
Mennonite brother. Through their preaching many souls were 
brought into the experience of a faith and joy like their own. 
Other preachers, also, who seemed to be called of God, were 
raised up here and there. 

As the movement went on, Otterbein and his co-laborers would 
meet together from time to time for consultation concerning its 
significance and its management. This was the initial step to- 
ward organization. But there was no intention as yet of form- 


1“The lack of ministers was very great, and the people were everywhere 
clamoring for religious instruction. . . . In Maryland it was deplorable, 
and sometimes seemed to be hopeless. The only practical expedient seemed 
to be to enlist the laity in the devotional work of the Church.” (Dubbs, “His- 
tory of the Reformed Church, German” (American Church History Series), 


P- 309.) 


The Episcopal Idea: Scriptural—Later 401 


ing a new ecclesiastical body." Indeed, had the existing churches 
made provision for the nurture and direction of this new life 
which was arising in various parts of their territory, both these 
older churches and the revivalists’ congregations might have se- 
cured a needed benefit ; and separation would probably have been 
prevented. But no such fostering official care was offered them. 
On the contrary, they were set at naught, and left to their own 
leaders.” 

Of the general apathy of the churches of the time there can 
be no doubt whatever. So, in the present instance, there was the 
contact of a religion of observances or of indifference with a 
genuine, if sometimes ill regulated, religious enthusiasm—of 
snow with fire. 

When, in the year 1800, the new society did become a separate 
ecclesiastical organization, under the name of The United Breth- 
ren in Christ, it was a most logical result that such men as Ot- 
terbein and Bohm, recognized as true fathers in God, should be 
asked to continue the supervision of the work which had grown 
up chiefly under their hands. Accordingly an episcopal form of 
government was adopted, and these two chief evangelists were 
elected as the first bishops of the organized evangelistic Church.* 


1“Step by step, and without any purpose on his part to form a new and 
separate religious denomination, Mr. Otterbein was led onward in a course 
which, under the shaping hand of Providence, ultimately led to this result. 

Like Mr. Wesley, the leader of the movement which gave Methodism 
to the world, he was disposed to cling to his mother Church; and, in fact, he 
never did formally separate himself, nor was he by any formal action of the 
coetus ever separated from the German Reformed Church.” (Berger, “His- 
tory of the United Brethren in Christ” (American Church Series), p. 328.) 

“When it became evident that a life which was foreign to the Reformed 
Church was in course of development, many ministers and churches gradually 
withdrew from this well-meant evangelistic movement.” (Dubbs, “History 
of the Reformed Church, German” (American Church History Series), p. 
312.) 

“Otterbein and Bohm traveled much, visiting various charges, and direct- 
ing the ministers in their work, sending them on tours to different places 
as exigencies demanded. . . . When the first of the regular succession 
of Annual Conferences was held, that of 1800, these men, Otterbein and 
Bohm, were accordingly elected and fully authorized to perform in an official 


402 Christianity as Organized 


The present government of the United Brethren, who have becotie almost 
wholly a Church of English-speaking people, is largely democratic. Even 
the delegates, both ministerial and lay, that compose the General Confer- 
ence, which is the lawmaking body of the Church, are elected by the people. 
Women are eligible to membership in this body, and also in the regular 
ministry of the Church. 

The ministry exists in one order only—that of the eldership. Bishops ~ 
are chosen by the General Conference, and for a term of four years, subject 
to indefinite reélection ;+ and are not set apart to their office with any form of 
ordination. They preside over the Conferences, both General and Annual. 
Each bishop is assigned to a district consisting of the territories of several 
Annual Conferences—at present from six to thirteen—by a committee elected 
for the purpose. 

The Church territory is divided among the Annual Conferences, which 
are composed of ministers, both itinerant and local, and lay delegates—one 
of the latter for each pastoral charge. 

The territory of an Annual Conference is divided into districts under the 
supervision of Presiding Elders elected by the Conference. 

The method of pastoral supply is that of the itinerancy. Pastors are ap- 
pointed to their charges by a Stationing Committee, which consists of the 
presiding Bishop and the Presiding Elders of the preceding year, together 
with any that may have been elected to succeed them. The appointee has 
the right, in case of dissatisfaction, to appeal to the Annual Conference—a 
right, however, which is rarely exercised. The pastoral term, originally one 
year, then extended to two, then to three, is now without limitation.* 


A still later representative of the idea of scriptural and ex- 
pedient episcopacy is The Reformed Episcopal Church, organ- 
ized in 1873. “This Church recognizes and adheres to Episco- 
pacy, not as of divine right, but as a very ancient and desirable 
form of church polity.” 


way the work they had so long done in an unofficial way.” (Berger, “His- 
tory of the United Brethren in Christ” (American Church History Series), 
D. 364.) 

“Bishop Glossbrenner was elected for ten successive terms, after which, 
being no longer efficient, he was elected bishop emeritus, his death occurring 
two years after.” (Berger, “History of the United Brethren,” p. 265.) 

“Discipline of the United Brethren in Christ (1905). 

“Declaration of Principles of the Reformed Episcopal Church.” 


VII. 


THE EPISCOPAL IDEA: AMERICAN EPISCOPAL 
METHODISM. 


THE idea of a scriptural and expedient episcopate has re- 
ceived its strongest embodiment in American Methodism. As 
we have seen, the patriarchal or autocratic form, which it as- 
sumed first of all in the person of Wesley himself, gave place 
in the British Islands, at the close of his personal administra- 
tion, to a government by the Conference, with no marked epis~ 
copal features. But in America the course of development was 
conspicuously different. Here the Conference became supreme 
before the venerable founder’s death, while on the other hand 
the episcopal office was retained with much of its original power, 
responsibility, and opportunity. It is this latter development 
which we are now, as briefly as may be, to trace. 


I. THE CONNECTIONAL IDEA. 


Let us think, then, of a few scattered Wesleyans in the Amer- 
ican Colonies in the sixth decade of the eighteenth century. 
Among them are three local preachers—Robert Strawbridge a 
small farmer, Philip Embury a carpenter, and Captain Thomas 
Webb a battle-scarred soldier of the British army. Societies be- 
gan to be formed, converts gained, “preaching houses” built or 
bought. 

How shall these societies be governed and inter-related? Con- 
ceivably each little congregation might manage its own affairs, 
with no recognition of any outside authority or supervision. 
Meantime new congregations of like faith and order would be 
established, all self-governing and self-propagating, but all in 
more or less fraternal association with one another. This would 
have been the way of the Independent or the Baptist. But the 
Wesleyan formative idea was that of connectionalism, not that 


(493) 


494 Christianity as Organized 


of independency. So the American Methodists sent an urgent 
request to Wesley, three thousand miles away, to provide them 
with ministerial service. Wesley, on his part, felt the responsi- 
bility of a pastor toward “these poor sheep in the wilderness.” 
They were exposed to false doctrine, to laxity of discipline, to 
many perils from which it was incumbent upon him, as far as 
possible, to protect them. 

Not only so, but they represented an opportunity to do a larger 
work in the New World, to which he could not blamelessly be 
indifferent. The aggressive spirit of evangelism, of the Chris- 
tian soldiers’ league “offensive and defensive” which he would 
fain have formed, appealed to him. For the abiding vision of 
the Holy War which had caught Wesley’s eye was not that of 
the conquest and re-conquest of a single elect Mansoul. It was 
that of conquering in love the rebellious multitudes of his own 
and other lands, even of the whole world, to the obedience of 
the Lord Christ who had died for their salvation. And here in 
the American Colonies was a continental mission field. 

Accordingly a missionary volunteer, Richard Boardman, was 
appointed by Wesley as his “assistant,’’ or superintendent of so- 
cieties, in these Colonies. 

There was but one pastoral charge, or circuit. Its name ap- 
pears in the minutes of the English Conference of 1770 as 
“America;” and of this wide but almost wholly uncultivated 


field Boardman took the oversight. He was superseded, after 


two years, by Francis Asbury. But as the number of societies 
increased, other circuits were organized, and a “general assist- 
ant,” Thomas Rankin, was appointed to take charge of the 
whole work. Afterwards, on Rankin’s return to England in 
the beginning of the War of the Revolution, Asbury, by the 


choice of the preachers and the subsequent recognition of Wes- 


ley, became general assistant. He was not superseded and he 
never quitted the field—the man of the hour had come. 

The proposed form of government was an extension to Amer- 
ica of the polity of British Methodism. Wesley’s authority must 


be supreme, here as there. The general assistant, as his repre-— 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 495 


sentative, was to call the Conference together, preside over its 
deliberations, decide every question that might be brought be- 
fore it, and make the appointments of the preachers to their 
fields of labor. He might be removed from office and recalled 
to England, and any one else or no one at all appointed in his 
place, at any time. And to this absolute personal government 
the preachers agreed for a little more than a decade." As to the 
people, there was no thought of giving them any share in gov- 
ernmental affairs. 

Now is this to be classed as a scriptural and expedient proce- 
dure? Shall evangelic church government, like Romanism, offer 
an example of no other individualism than that which it exem- 
plifies by the concentration of all its powers in a single indi- 
vidual? Its advocates would certainly search in vain for a 
precedent in the New Testament. Nor could they, on any rea- 
sonable ground, plead for its recognition as a model method of 
government for the Church of Christ.* Let it be remembered, 
however, that no such pleas were ever put forward in its behalf. 
On neither side of the Atlantic was Wesley as yet consciously 
building a church. He was only organizing societies for spir- 
itual culture and the publication of the gospel, supplementary to 
the Church of England. Besides, the practical, rather than any 
theoretical, aspect of the question was that which chiefly deter- 


*“On hearing every preacher for or against what is in debate the right 
of determination shall rest with him [Asbury] according to the Minutes.” 
(Action of the Delaware Conference, 1779.) 

This, it is true, was the action of an irregular body, not properly a “Con- 
ference” at all. But it seems to have fairly embodied the principle on which 
the Conference acted in all its sessions—excepting, of course, those of 1778, 
*79, ‘80, at which Asbury did not preside—till the regular session of the 
year 1784, inclusive. 

“When we follow the course of events to which Wesley, from year to 
year, and with so much address and tact conformed himself, it is quite easy to 
see how and under what influence he was led so to construct his society, and 
so to organize its legislature, and its judicial and its administrative council, 
as in fact nullifies, nay, puts contempt upon, the very first principle of a 
true Church organization.” (Isaac Taylor, “Wesley and Methodism,” p. 
239.) 


496 Christianity as Organized 


mined the course to be followed.” For a more practical man 
than the founder of Methodism has never lived. Great was his 
love of truth, but only for the sake of life. Asa leader and law- 
maker, he was ready to acquaint himself “not only with that 
which is most perfect in the abstract, but also that which is best 
suited under any given circumstances.”* With no preconceived 
set of institutions or system of government for his societies, he 
simply availed himself of such means and measures, from time 
to time, as seemed to be demanded by the existing conditions. 
One after another early prejudices were dismissed, as obstructive 
to the requirements of the work which had been given him to 
do. So the autocratic administration of the societies, beginning 
as it did in the simplest possible manner, was perpetuated and 
extended because it kept proving itself so effective. 

The strong and saintly soul on which this administration rest- 
ed did not desire it. On the contrary, inconsistent as it might 
seem with his unfailing practicalness, there was much to incline 
Wesley to a life of retirement. He was devout, studious, in 
young manhood afraid to expose himself to the temptations of 
ordinary society, bent upon the saving of his own soul. Had 
he waked into consciousness two or three centuries earlier he 
might have sought refuge in a monastery—and founded ere long 
a great monastic order.* But the task which by such manifest 


*Compare the government of the famous Sunday school of Dr. Stephen 
H. Tyng in New York City: “In my early years as a Sunday school worker 
I wrote to Dr. Tyng, asking for a copy of the constitution of his Sunday 
school. He gave me a prompt and courteous reply, but said he was sorry he 
‘could not come.’ Dr, Tyng was his own Sunday school constitution. The 
power could not have been lodged in a wiser, more generous, more affec- 
tionate, or more positive heart and will; but it is a good thing that this 
autocratic idea does not prevail in the modern Sunday school.” (Vincent, 
“The Modern Sunday School,” p. 40.) 

2Aristotle, “Politics,” IV. 1. 

“Indeed, for a long season the greatest pleasure I had desired on this 
side eternity was 

‘Creeping silent through the sylvan shades, 
Exploring what is wise and good in man.’ 


And we [his brother Charles and he] had attained our desire. We wanted 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 497 


tokens was appointed him of God, how could he refuse to do it? 
“Not for all the gold of Arabia,” said Thomas a Kempis, “would 
I have the care of souls for a single night.” The devout and 
morally sensitive recluse would not choose it, on any consider- 
ation, for himself. But the very keenness of conscience that 
bade him turn away trembling from the thought of such a 
charge must, if sound and healthy, constrain him to accept it 
when manifestly given of the chief Shepherd of souls. 


2. THE QUESTION OF THE SACRAMENTS. 


Yet the question was inevitable, How long are the societies to 
be held in their present ecclesiastical status? Did not their cir- 
cumstances, at least here in America, call imperatively for an 
ordained ministry and the administration of the sacraments? 
From the time of the first Annual Conference, in 1773, and 
even earlier, this was a vital and ever-recurring question. 

The seal of Divine approval marked the labors of the itinerant 
evangelists and their local fellow-workers. Like the early Chris- 
tians, they were for the most part unlearned men, but not without 
charisms of prayer and song and soul-moving speech. Like 
them, they came to be regarded as hot-headed separatists from 
the Church of their fathers, and were honored with abundant 
ridicule and scorn—‘‘everywhere,” in the Christian churches and 
outside, “spoken against.’’ In fact, they stumbled no little; but 
they also found the scripture fulfilled which saith that, while 
“the bows of the mighty men are broken,” “they that stumbled 
are girded with strength.’”’ Wiuth no pretension to the accom- 
plishments of the biblical scholar or the trained theologian, they 
did know the supreme fact of personal experience, and it was 


nothing. We looked for nothing more in this world when we were dragged 
out again, by carnest importunity, to preach at one place and another, and 
so carried on, we knew not how, without any design but the general one 
of saving souls, into a situation which, had it been named to us at first, 
would have appeared far worse than death.” (Wesley, “Farther Appeal to 
Men of Reason and Religion,” III. 18.) Compare Luther’s avowal at the 
beginning of the Reformation: “I wish to live in quiet, and I am hurried 
into the midst of tumults.” 


34 


498 Christianity as Organized 


this they told in the Holy Spirit and in power: “If any man be 
in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; 
behold, they are become new.”’ Such was the typical Methodist 
preacher of that pioneer time. No idolatry of a church, old or 
new, but the love of human souls as re-conditioned and revealed 
in Christ, was the passion of his life. Conference, the itiner- 
ancy, the appointing power, organization—these all were valued 
only as making a way through which the spoken gospel might 
have free course. Organization must wait upon evangelism, not 
evangelism upon organization. 

All the while the number of converts was increasing from hun- 
dreds to thousands; and in the class meeting they were being 
trained for holy and useful lives. But there was no sacramental 
administration. No one could be baptized by the Christian 
preacher through whom he had made profession of faith in 
Christ. The people could not receive the Lord’s Supper at the 
hands of the men whose evangelic ministrations had brought 
them into communion with their Lord. And the rectors of the 
Church of England, to whom the Conference had commended 
them for the sacramental ordinances,’ were almost without ex- 
ception unsympathetic toward their spiritual experience, and in 
most cases altogether worldly or openly immoral in conduct. 
For many of them parishes had been secured in this country be- 
cause they were so idle or so profligate as to be unendurable at 
home.” They were “blind mouths’ or worse. What should be 
done? It was a critical situation. 


17 Every preacher who acts in connection with Mr. Wesley and the 
brethren who labor in America is strictly to avoid administering the ordi- 
nances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 2. All the people among whom we 
labor to be earnestly exhorted to attend the Church, and to receive the ordi- 
nances there; but in a particular manner to press the people in Maryland and 
Virginia to the observance of this minute.” (Minutes of the first American 
Conference, 1773.) 

?Evidence of this bad state of things is indisputable: 

“The progress of ecclesiastical affairs was from bad to worse. Such was 
the result of the absence of all proper government and the presence of place- 
men eager for spoils, instead of priests eager for souls. The predominant idea — 
of a State Church threw its baleful shadow over the spiritual estate of the 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 499 


In war-time, the societies in America being cast upon their 
own resources, the Conference, at its meeting in Fluvanna Coun- 
ty, Virginia, in the year 1779, appointed a presbytery, and sol- 
emnly set apart certain of its senior members, with prayer and 
the imposition of hands, to administer the sacraments. One year 
afterwards, however, at the earnest entreaty of Asbury and oth- 
ers, this administration of ordinances was discontinued. Not 
that any doubt was felt as to the validity of the presbyterial or- 
dination that had been given; but it was a different form of or- 
dination from that to which as quasi members of the Church of 
England the Methodists had been accustomed. And more espe- 
cially it had not received the sanction of their revered leader. 
Therefore, the Conference now agreed to wait until communi- 
cation could be had with Wesley, in hope of some more satis- 
factory solution of their problem. 

Such a solution was reached at the close of the war. In the 
United States of America the Church of England did not and 
could not exist. Wesley had already appealed in vain to the 
bishop of London, in whose diocese the Colonies were included, 
to ordain a presbyter for the American Methodists;* and now 


colonies. There was but a form of godliness, which denied the power thereof. 
‘The Roman Catholics and dissenters looked with contempt upon an Estab- 
lishment so profligate in some of its members that even the laity sought to 
purify it, and yet so weak in its discipline that neither clergy nor laity could 
purge it of offenders.’ (Maryland MSS.: from archives at Fulham.) 

“The incomes would average two hundred pounds per annum. . . . Yet 
all the controversies of the clergy turned on this point of their living. Noth- 
ing spiritual or intellectual, no problems of theology or questions of efficient 
administration, had awakened their interest. ‘No wonder,’ writes Dr. Hawks, 
‘that such a bastard Establishment as that of Maryland was odious to so many 
of the people; we think their dislike is evidence of their virtue.’ And no 
wonder that the Methodists, who now came in, swept the country.” (Tiffany, 
“History of the Protestant Episcopal Church” (American Church History 
Series), pp. 71, 78.) 

“Wesley besought Lowth, Bishop of London, to ordain at least two priests 
who could administer the sacraments to American Methodists. It is doubt- 
ful if any single action of a bishop has ever been more fruitful for evil than 
his refusal.” (McConnell, “History of the American Episcopal Church,” p. 
170.) Whatever the spirit or the apparent unwisdom of this episcopal action, 
as to its “evil” results opinions will differ. 


500 Christianity as Organized 


any lingering hope of relief from that source was cut off. As 
to the ceremony of ordination, he had long been convinced that 
the right to perform it belongs to presbyters and not to bishops 
as such. Accordingly in September of the year 1784, assisted 
by Dr. Thomas Coke and the Rev. James Creighton, presby- 
ters of the Church of England, he ordained Richard Whatcoat 
and Thomas Vasey to the office of elder, for service in Amer- 
ica.” 

But Wesley was a firm believer in the propriety and effective- 
ness of the episcopacy. Much as he objected (for easily appre- 
ciable reasons) to his American superintendents’ calling them- 
selves by the title “bishop’”—which they did soon after the or- 
ganization of the Church—had he not long embodied the real- 
ity, even in an ultra form, in himself? and had he not practically 
set up the office already in America in the person of Rankin and 
of Asbury?’ Moreover, it had proved to be singularly service- 
able; it was full of promise; it could not now be dispensed with. 
The plan of ministerial service, therefore, was completed by the 
ordination of Dr. Thomas Coke to the superintendency of the 
American societies, with instructions to confer the same office 
upon Francis Asbury, and the office of elder upon such American 
preachers as might be thought sufficient, together with those or- 
dained by Wesley himself, to supply the present need. 

At a country church, Barratt’s Chapel, in the woods of Dela- 
ware, Coke had his first meeting with Asbury, and told the ob- 
ject of his coming. But here arose a question: Should the Con- 
ference have any voice in this matter? There is no good reason 
to believe that Wesley intended that it should even be called to- 
gether. It was enough that Coke should act under his authority, 
ordaining Asbury to the superintendency, as directed, and both 
choosing and ordaining other preachers to the order of elders; 


*Cf. the proposal of Dr. William White, pp. 424, 425. 

2“Ques. Who are the persons that exercise the episcopal office in the Meth- 
odist Church in Europe and America? Ans. John Wesley, Thomas Coke, and 
Francis Asbury, by regular order and succession.” (Minutes of the American 
Conference of 1789.) 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 501 


and then that the government should go on, a purely personal 
government, as before. 

Such, however, was not Asbury’s view of the situation. His 
thirteen years’ experience in America had probably made it evi- 
dent that here the Conference must be supreme. Let the preach- 
ers say whether or not they will adopt the proposed form of 
administration; let them, if they will, elect their own deacons, 
elders, and superintendent, accepting Wesley’s nominees as sim- 
ply nominees, and thus by their own action organize the societies 
into a completed church. As for himself, Asbury was unwilling 
to accept the superintendency on Wesley’s appointment alone. 
He must be chosen thereto by the free suffrages of his breth- 
ren. He would not be leader of an unwilling band of fellow- 
workers. 

Besides, to be chosen both by Wesley and the American preach- 
ers would make his own position more secure; for he could not 
then be recalled to England (as already had at one time been 
done) at Wesley’s will. Did, then, the personal motive of per- 
petuating his own leadership influence Asbury’s call for the vote 
of a general convention? Doubtless the man who possesses a 
distinct gift of leadership and command finds the exercise of it, 
like the exercise of any other natural power, enjoyable. All nor- 
mal activity reacts in pleasure. But it would be a reckless crit- 
icism that should accuse the character here in question of unholy 
ambition. By every token, the work of Christ as called for at 
his hands was first in Francis Asbury’s thought. But it is equal- 
ly certain that such work seemed to have been already given him 
in an honorable but hard and perilous position of general over- 
sight. If Fletcher of Madley could decline the office of suc- 
cessor to Wesley himself in Great Britain, and write to Wesley 
that the proposed recommendation to the Methodist societies for 
such a position would make him mount his horse ‘“‘and gallop 
away,” it requires but little of either imagination or charity to 
suppose that his contemporary and kindred spirit, the homeless 
Asbury, should be similarly unselfish in his desire to continue 
in his present extraordinary and toilsome office. 


802 Christianity as Organized 


But whatever may have been the general assistant’s motive, he 
then and there struck Wesley’s plan for the government of the 
Methodists of America a blow that foretold its death. Govern- 
ment by a man began forthwith to give way before government 
by law.* 

Accordingly, at Asbury’s instance, a conference, or organizing 
convention, of all the preachers was called; and by the action of 
this conference, which met in Baltimore on Christmas eve, 1784, 
ihe organization of the church, under Coke and Asbury as its 
cuperintendents, was effected.”. And the official name that was 
viven the new ecclesiastical body told the importance of the 
superintendency 1 in the thought of its organizers, The Methodist 
= biscopal Church.* 


3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUTONOMY. 


That Wesley’s office, so manifestly extraordinary, should be 
perpetuated anywhere, whole and entire, was out of the ques- 


“When Asbury exclaimed, as Thomas Ware declares he did, ‘Doctor, we 
wil call the preachers together, and the voice of the preachers shall be to me 
the voice of God,’ he struck the knell of personal government, and rung in the 
era of government by the Conference.” (Neely, “The Governing Conference 
in Methodism,” pp. 252, 253.) 

2“\Vhen the Conference was seated, Dr. Coke and myself were unanimously 
elected to the superintendency of the Church. . . . We spent the whole 
week in Conference, debating freely and determining all things by a majority 
of votes.” (Asbury’s Journal, December 24, 1784.) Determining all things 
by a majority of votes—the mark of a most significant new departure in 
American Methodism as organized. 

“It could hardly be thought unfitting that the superintendents should call 
themselves “bishops” when the Church had already been named—what it 
undoubtedly was—‘Episcopal.” 

“The Church thus organized was an Episcopal Church: (1) by expressly 
chosen title; (2) by the sure and certain testimony of contemporary docu- 
ments and witnesses; (3) by the preceding affiliations of the Societies and 
their founder and American leaders; (4) by its threefold ordinations, first 
in England and then in America; (5) by virtue of the nonexistence of an 
Episcopal Church in this country at the time of the organization of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, this nonexistence being expressly assigned as the 
sufficient reason for creating this Church. It was not a secession. There 
was nothing to secede from. It was not a schism. There was no episcopally 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 503 


tion. Even though his unique personality, with its combination 
of administrative genius, holiness of character, and well-nigh in- 
credible industry, could have found a successor, his relation to 
the societies was in the nature of the case impossible of rep- 
etition. “For though ye should have ten thousand tutors in 
Christ, yet have ye not many fathers.” 

Then, too, the Methodist people were making progress in 
many ways. At first with few exceptions laboring men and 
women, uneducated, unused to the responsibilities of leadership, 
ready to be governed as well as taught, they rapidly increased 
not only in numbers but also in Christian knowledge and strength 
oi character. In the preachers of the Conference a like devel- 
opment of mind and will was realized. For it was no repressive 
priestly regimen under which they had been placed, but the free, 
genial, godly fellowship of brethren. They were growing in 
knowledge. For they must read, must study the Scriptures, must 
confer with one another, must declare their message continually 
—and “if you want to know anything, go and teach it.” They 
must be incessant in doing all manner of good as opportunity 
offered. And the striving after such an ideal meant not only the 
enlargement of a brotherhood but equally the growth of the In- 
dividual. It meant greater independence of action and fitness 
for the functions of administration. It meant the end of the 
paternal autocracy—for “what makes a man of a child is excel- 
lent, but what makes a child of a man is evil.”” Hence the more 
liberal and elaborate system of polity in British Methodism (and, 
unhappily, the divisions that wasted its strength) soon after the 
founder’s death. Hence, also, the autonomy of American Meth- 
odism before his death." 


organized body of Christ in America in which to create a schism.” (Tigert, 
“The Making of Methodism,” p. 67.) 

*“Tt would be admitted by all that it would be simply absurd to give to a 
newly gathered Church of South African troglodytes, or Ceylonese tree- 
lodgers, or Australian savages, the same powers and functions which have 
been exercised by the Church of a Jay or a James in England. . . . Now, 
these extreme cases prove the principle. . . . But, in proportion as the laity 
of a Church advance in intelligence and the discipline of Christian culture, 


504 Christianity as Organized 


One’s work, whether it be great or small, is continually pass- 
ing beyond one’s power. Neither the “dead hand” nor the living 
hand can reach forth and control it. Even should it take the 
form of a strongly organized body, it will be subject to unfore- 
seen changes of far-reaching significance. “My order is too 
much for me,” lamented Francis of Assisi. “I was a little sur- 
prised,” said John Wesley, ‘when I received some letters from 
Mr. Asbury affirming that no person in Europe knew how to 
direct those in America.” In these two particular cases, how- 
ever, there was a noteworthy difference. Francis’s order was de- 
parting from him in the way of hierarchical control and of un- 
enlightened faction and strife; Wesley’s trans-Atlantic Confer- 
ence was departing in the way of personal responsibility and 
reasonable self-government for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. 
He was venerated as no one else, either “in Europe” or on the 
whole earth by his American followers, and Asbury next only 
to him. The preachers in Conference assembled were more than 
willing to accept the Superintendent as their president, and to 
receive appointments at his word. But the supreme governing 
power must be lodged in the Conference itself. 

It is true that the organizing Conference of 1784, not rudely 
breaking with the past, adopted. a resolution of submission to 
Wesley’s governing authority: “During the life of the Rev. Mr. 
Wesley we acknowledge ourselves his sons in the gospel, ready 
in matters belonging to church government to obey his com- 
mands.’”’ By this very action, however, the Conference implic- 
itly claimed the liberty to choose for itself. If at some subse- 
quent session it saw fit to depart from this rule, which was not 
of the nature of a covenant, that too was within its power. And 
as a matter of fact, three years afterwards it was done: in 1787 
the resolution of submission was rescinded, the name of Wesley 
as chief superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church was _ 


it is fit and right that they should be taken into closer and more frequent as- 
sociation with the ministry in Church councils and decisions.” (Riggs, “Con- 
nectional Economy of Wesleyan Methodism,” pp. 109, 110.) The principle is 
applicable as truly to a body of preachers as to the people. 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 808 


left off the Minutes, and instructions received from him to elect 
Richard Whatcoat and Freeborn Garrettson to the superintend- 
ency were disobeyed. Thus was the ecclesiastic independency of 
American Methodism fully asserted and established. 


4. FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS. 


At the meeting called for the organization of the Church in 
1784 not quite sixty preachers were present, and the whole number 
of Conference members was only eighty-one. Fewer than one- 
fourth of this number, however, were elected and ordained eld- 
ers; and some of these were appointed to mission fields outside 
the United States. It was the elders’ duty to supply the people 
with the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. With 
this design the circuits were arranged in groups of from two to 
six each; and over each such district, or group of circuits, was 
appointed an elder. He must visit every society in these circuits, 
preaching as he went, but with the special official function of ad- 
ministering the sacraments. 

It occurred, however, as the number of ordinations in the Con- 
ference increased, that preachers in charge of circuits were in some 
instances themselves elders; and so the minister in charge of the 
district came to be distinguished as the presiding elder. 

But was not his office now becoming unnecessary? This would 
have been the case but for the fact that the office, almost if not 
quite from the very beginning, had developed functions that were 
probably not included in its original design. The presiding eld- 
er, somewhat like the archdeacon of the earlier medieval or the 
present English Church, became the bishop’s assistant, to repre- 
sent him on the district in his absence, and to give him at all times 
needful information concerning the state of the work. Thus the 
presiding eldership speedily developed into a lesser superintend- 
ency, or episcopate, under the general superintendency of the 
bishops. In the Discipline of 1786, not two years after the or- 
ganization of the Church, it is laid down as the official duty of 
the elder “to exercise within his own district, during the absence 
of the superintendents, all the powers invested in them for the 


306 Christianity as Organized 


government of our Church.” And in the Discipline of the next 
year we find included in the definition of this office the following 
duties: 


1. To travel through his appointed district. 

2. To administer baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and to perform all parts 
of divine service. 

3. In the absence of a bishop to.take charge of all the deacons, traveling 
and local preachers, and exhorters. 
. To change, receive, or suspend preachers. 
. To direct in the transaction of all the spiritual business of the Church. 
. To take care that every part of our Discipline be enforced. 
. To aid in the public collections. 
. To attend his bishop when present, and give him when absent all pos- 
information by letter of the state of his district. 


eu OU 


w 
me 
ion 
= 
Q 


Such was the presiding eldership in the second stage of its devel- 
opment; and through a somewhat stormy history, such essential- 
ly it has ever since remained.’ 


In the year 1792 the regular, or quadrennial, General Confer- 
ence was organized. Being composed substantially of the whole 
body of itinerant preachers, its powers were unlimited. It could 
annul any law of the Church or enact any additional law, create 
or abolish any office, take from or add to the Articles of Religion, 
by its own sole and immediate action. 

Sixteen years thereafter the Delegated General Conference 
was instituted. Its powers were limited.” It could not of itself 
make any constitutional change in the economy of the Church. 


"In the Methodist Episcopal Church the title was changed by the General 
Conference of 1908 to that of District Superintendent. 

*They were made to include all subjects of legislation except six, which 
were safeguarded by six Restrictive Rules. One is reminded, by way of con- 
trast, of the Constitution of the country in whose religious life this young 
“Church of the people” was to play so large a part. The Constitution of the 
United States confines the powers of the general government to the subjects 
which it specifies, and leaves legislation on all others to “the States respect- 
ively or to the people.” (Constitution, Amendments, Art. X.) The Church 
constitution forbids to the General Conference certain things, and permits all 
things else; the national constitution permits to Congress certain things, and 
forbids all else. 


ti, 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 507 


Such a change must still be made by the whole body of itinerant 
ministers: not now, however, as assembled at one time and place, 
but first, through their elected delegates at the General Confer- 
ence, and then, in their own person at the meetings of the various 
Annual Conferences. And with this institution, the Church, as 
to both its ministry and its legislative council, in all their main 
features, may be regarded as having completed its organization 
—with one significant exception. 


_ 5. Later ForMs oF ORGANIZATION. 


Not for more than half a century thereafter were laymen in- 
trusted with any part in legislation. Even then they did not de- 
mand it as a right; and never before had it been imposed upon 
them as a duty. As for the explanation, it will not be found in 
any extraordinary indifference on the part of Methodist laymen 
to the work and progress of the Church. For their peculiarity, 
in comparison with the laymen of other communions, was rather 
that of unusual activity. They were local preachers, exhorters, 
class leaders, personal workers, leaders in devotional meetings. 

Nor would it be a fair explanation to assert that the ministry, 
through love of power, were unwilling to accord to the laity 
their proper rights and opportunities ; for by no such spirit of un- 
righteousness were they dominated. They showed the heart not 
of a lord but of a brother toward all their brethren. How was 
it, then? They were only bearing the responsibility that seemed 
to be laid upon them in the providence of God. From the hands 
of their apostolic founder the government had passed easily and 
naturally into their own. They had administered it in the fear of 
God and for the good of the people; signal prosperity had attend- 
ed their administration; and they saw no reason to believe that 
lay representation, especially as not desired by the laity, would be 
an improvement. On the contrary, it seemed hazardous and en- 
feebling. The fact that other Protestant churches had tt—even 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, daughter of the Church of En- 
gland, according to laymen a large share in its government— 
and that it suited the genius of American civil institutions, count- 


808 Christianity as Organized 


ed for little or nothing. Methodism was sui generis, and in its 
peculiarities lay the secret of its success.’ 

Upon this exclusive ministerial government a side-light mai 
be thrown from the Methodist plan of pastoral supply. Has a 
Christian preacher a right to go and to stay where he pleases with 
his ministration of the gospel? Undoubtedly; but he may follow 
his judgment and conscience with equal fidelity in putting hi 
self under the control of the chief officers and representatives of 
the Church, to be sent where they will. Has a congregation a 
right to select the pastor under whose ministry they shall sit? 
Undoubtedly ; but they may also rightfully waive this right for 
satisfactory reasons, and accept the pastor appointed by some 
higher authority in the Church. Has a man the right to a de 
termining voice as to the amount of pecuniary compensation he 
shall receive for services rendered? Undoubtedly; but he has 
the right also to forego this right, as the Methodist preacher 
does—ad majorem gloriam Dei—and let the amount of com 
pensation be determined by those whom he serves. Who shal 
deny to ministers and people the free exercise of such Christian 
rights as these? . 

Here, then, appears the way of the Methodists. Its fundamental 
principle was not a claim but a sacrifice, the right of love to live 
its life, mutual self-surrender by preacher and people for the 
sake of the common good. And was it a very strange thing 
that this same principle should be permitted to determine 
the question of the layman’s participation in church govern 
ment ? 

Soldiers are honored, despite the fact that on occasion they 
must injure or even kill their fellow-men. They are honored 
because of their willingly surrendering the right to life itself, 
which all men hold so dear, at the call of their country. They 
are honored because, in the face of grim and terrible death, they 


“The authority exercised by Wesley through his lieutenants was that of 
a commander-in-chief in time of war. The Methodist society was on a wat 
basis, and perhaps no more efficient fighting machine was ever devised.” 
(Heermance, “Democracy in the Church,” p. 74.) 


: 
| 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 509 


are faithful both to obey and, if their office require, calmly to 
command the obedience of others. Said the Roman soldier at 
the greatness of whose faith Jesus marveled: “I also am a man 


under authority, having under myself soldiers.’ And while mil- 


itary organization is far indeed from being a perfect type for 
either Church or State, it does illustrate the principle that, while 
insistence upon a right is sometimes a good thing, holding a 
right in abeyance for the sake of a cause may be distinctly better. 
Beyond controversy, better, inasmuch as the supreme law of life 
is not insistence upon rights but the service of love. “We ought 
to lay down our lives for the brethren.” 

But the Conference, still guided by its ideas of practical effi- 
ciency, was gradually reducing the power of ministers and add- 
ing to that of laymen. Originally, for example, the preacher in 
charge appointed his own stewards; afterwards they were elect- 
ed by the Quarterly Conference on his nomination. Originally 
he could at his own discretion give license to exhort or to preach; 
afterwards it must be given by the Quarterly Conference. Orig- 
inally he could himself expel a member from the church; after- 
wards it must be done by a committee of laymen. 

But the movement in this direction was checked by what 
seemed an indiscreet and passionate attempt to increase its speed. 
This attempt was the agitation of the question of lay representa- 
tion and kindred measures, which led to the organization of the 
Methodist Protestant Church in 1830. Another generation must 
now pass before the ultra-conservatism which was strengthened 
by this event would admit of the participation of any others 
than the itinerant preachers in church legislation. 

At the present time laymen share equally with the ministerial 
delegates, in both Methodist Episcopal Churches, the powers and 
duties of the General Conference.’ 


*“The act of the body of the ministry in the Annual Conferences and 
of the ministers in the General Conference in providing for lay delegation 
has been pronounced the most remarkable instance of the voluntary relin- 
quishment of power to be found in the history of the world.” (Neely, “The 
Governing Conference in Methodism,” p. 434.) 


510 Christianity as Organized 


6. THe BisHopr’s Power. 


Notwithstanding such democratic changes as these, there is 
one of Wesley’s powers that has been transmitted in its entirety 
to the Methodist Episcopal bishops of the present day—namely, 
the appointing of preachers to their fields of labor. Theoret-— 
ically this power is unlimited, save by the limitation of the pas- 
toral term, where such limitation exists. On his sole responsi- 
bility, a bishop, either at the session of an Annual Conference or 
in the interval between its sessions, may remove any pastor from 
his charge and send him to any other in the Church. In point 
of fact, however, such appointments are not made ad interim 
without the consent of the pastor himself, or else in case of ex- 
treme necessity; and at the Conference session the bishop is as- 
sisted in making the appointments, according to a custom that 
has acquired the force of law, by the presiding elders in coun- 
cil. Here, moreover, the wishes of preachers and people, as well 
as the demands of the common cause, are carefully considered. 

But a more distinct and positive safeguard than any of these 
customs is the law, that if a preacher refuse to fill an appoint- 
ment he is accountable not to the bishop but to the Annual Con- 
ference only. Not to his bishop, who can neither prescribe nor 
inflict a penalty, but to his Conference, of whose sympathy he is 
sure, every preacher stands or falls. 

Still the appointing power may, on theoretical grounds, be eas- 
ily objected to. The closet philosopher would almost certainly 
disapprove of it. The critic may lay down what seems to be a 
fatally damaging argument against the committal of such ex- 
traordinary authority to any human being. But practically this 
authority has approved itself, in the general effect, as a bene- 
faction to both pastor and congregation, and an element of great 
effectiveness in the operations of the Church.’ 


1Among the suggested modifications of the offices of superintendency, 
one of the most reasonable would seem to be that the presiding elders of 
an Annual Conference shall be constituted in law the advisory council of 
the bishop, and that no pastoral or other appointment shall be made during 
the session of Conference, except in open council, 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism ied. 


7. Is THE EPISCOPATE IN METHODISM AN “ORDER?” 


The episcopate, in the current Methodist terminology, is not 
an order but an office only. In the explanatory note prefixed to 
the Form of Consecrating Bishops in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, it is explicitly stated: “This service is not to be under- 
stood as an ordination to a higher Order in the Christian min- 
istry, beyond and above that of Elder, or Presbyter, but as a 
solemn and fitting Consecration for the special and sacred duties 
of Superintendency in the Church.”” Hence the word “ordain,” 
which is used in the service for the setting apart of deacons and 
elders, is nowhere used in this service. 

What, then, is an order as contradistinguished from an office 
in the Christian ministry ? 

(1) It has been defined in the Church of Rome—at least in 
the case of ‘““Holy Orders”—as a ministerial office the ordination 
to which confers upon its recipient a specific grace, or spiritual 
power, which no layman can possess. This power has reference 
particularly to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Reaching 
its perfection in the priest, it qualifies him to perform the miracle 
of transubstantiation. But some measure of it is imparted to 
the lower Holy Orders—namely, that of the deacon and that of 
the sub-deacon, and even to the four Minor Orders. 

This sacerdotal belief is also professed, as to its essence, 
though otherwise more or less modified, by sacramentarians out- 
side the Roman communion. 

It need not here be taken into account. 

(2) An order might be defined as a lifetime ministerial office 
set forth and sanctioned in the New Testament. Under this defi- 
nition, how many of these New Testament ministerial offices 
may be counted? The Congregationalist, the Baptist, the Pres- 
byterian, and the Lutheran would answer, One; the Protestant 
Episcopalian, three; the Episcopal Methodist, two. These, then, 
must be accounted orders; while all other lifetime ministerial 
offices, not being able to claim New Testament sanction, shall be 
called offices only. 


512 Christianity as Organized 


It should be noted, however, in passing, that as a matter of 
fact it would be an impossible task for any of the above-men- 
tioned churches—or indeed for any present-day church—to show 
that its lifetime ministerial office or offices are set forth and 
sanctioned in the New Testament. For such lifetime ministerial 
offices as are there set forth and sanctioned have no proper rep- 
resentatives in modern churches. True, their formative ideas 
remain in the Church; but the forms and functions in which the 
ideas originally appeared have nowhere the same official embodi- 
ment now as then. 

(3) An order might be defined as a ministerial office that con- 
fers authority for the administration of a sacrament. Accepting 
this definition, Episcopal Methodism would still show the same 
two orders in her ministry—deacons being authorized to baptize 
and presbyters to administer the Lord’s Supper. 

Here, too, however—and even more obviously than in the case 
just considered—no specific New Testament authority, either in 
the form of command or of precedent, could be claimed for these 
two orders. For what New Testament congregation ever re- 
quired ordination, or office-giving, as a prerequisite to the ad- 
ministration of either baptism or the Lord’s Supper? 

(4) An order might be defined as simply a lifetime ministerial 
office. Under which definition Episcopal Methodism would 
count, thus far in her history, three ministerial orders. 


Now to those who hold that the Christian minister is not a 
priest, and that no form of government, whether it appear in 
the New Testament or not, has been made universally and per- 
petually binding on the Church, this distinction between order 
and office would seem to render a more than doubtiul service. 
Because it is liable to be understood as involving some idea of 
sacerdotalism, or at least of an exclusive divine right. So, there- 
fore, all use of the ecclesiastical term “order,” which is both non- 
Scriptural and vague, might, with perhaps more gain than loss, 
be discontinued. 

At any rate, the confusion of thought which has sometimes at- 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 513 


tended the subject may, without difficulty, be avoided by an ex- 
act definition of terms. Is it asked, then, whether the Methodist 
episcopacy be an order or simply an office? Take the pains to 
avoid all trickery of words, define the term “order”—and the 
question is answered. 


8. EpiscopAL LIMITATIONS. 


Bishops have no legislative function. They are moderators, 
but not members of the lawmaking council of the Church—offer- 
ing no motion or resolution and casting no vote. So the dis- 
tinction is here clearly drawn between prelacy and episcopacy. 
The prelate is a lawmaking bishop. Thus, even in that very 
mild form of prelacy that is represented by the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church, there is a house of bishops coordinate with the 
house of deputies in the supreme legislative body. Without the 
concurrence of the bishops, therefore, no law can be passed. But 
the Methodist episcopacy represents the proper episcopal office 
of oversight and administration without the addition of legis- 
lative powers. 

Nor do the bishops of Methodism have any voice in the con- 
demnation or the acquittal of a minister on trial, whether it be 
for personal or for official misconduct. Neither are they en- 
titled to any option as to who shall be admitted into the minis- 
try: they can ordain no one either as deacon or elder until he 
shall have been elected to the office by the Annual Conference; 
and they must ordain such as have been duly elected. The power 
of ordination is invested in them as a matter of orderly arrange- 
ment, not of divine right. In fact, it is the Conference that both 
elects and through its chosen representative ordains.* 

For such as the foregoing reasons, therefore, the Methodist 
General Superintendency, notwithstanding its investiture with 


*Note the language of the Form of Ordaining Elders and of Conse- 
crating Bishops in the Methodist Episcopal Church: “The Lord pour upon 
thee the Holy Ghost for the office and work of an Elder [or Bishop] in 
the Church of God, now committed to thee by the authority of the Church, 
through the imposition of our hands.” 


33 


514 Christianity as Organized 


the power of appointing pastors, has been called a “moderate 
episcopacy.” 

The bishops are officially codrdinate. No one of them may 
exercise the least authority over the others, or be charged with 
any duty from which the others are exempt. Each is an itin- 
erant general superintendent—the Missionary Bishops of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church being the only exceptions—and is 
expected to preside over all the Annual Conferences, at home and 
abroad, in his turn, according to a plan of visitation agreed upon 
at the annual Bishops’ Meeting." 

There could hardly be a grander ecclesiastic idea than that of 
such a superintendency, authoritative, brotherly, world-wide. In 
its practical working, however, it must submit to severe limita- 
tions. No man during the few years—say, from ten to twenty- 
five—of his tenure of the episcopal office can become, in fact as 
well as in name, a general overseer of a world-wide church. 
Great is the difference even between Wesley’s visitation of the 
United Society of Great Britain, or Asbury’s and McKendree’s 


itinerancy through the territory of eight Annual Conferences in 


a rude new country, and the twentieth-century Methodist bishop’s 
circuit of the globe. 

If the claims of ecclesiastical unity should permit, the lessen- 
ing of territorial jurisdiction would make the general superin- 
tendency more serviceable because more real. 


9. Power oF Tuis Po.iry. 


Notwithstanding the discount of numerous faults and short- 
comings, of maladjustments, imperfection of details, failures in 
administration, Episcopal Methodism has been the marvel of 


American Christianity. Making its start without material, in-— 


1“Such an office and such officers are unparalleled in the history of ec- 


clesiastical government. . . . Its freedom from difference and dissen- 
sion, its harmony of counsel and unity of wise and energetic action, are a 


continuous condition sine qua non not only of its efficiency but of its very © 
life. Should these characteristics be permanently lost, the office as it has 


existed must perish.” (Tigert, “The Making of Methodism,” p. 7.) 


1 


The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 515 


tellectual, or social advantages, more than a century later than 
any other of the principal Christian denominations,’ it has over- 
spread the land with its churches, schools, missions, literature, 
and people, and pressed its way into other lands, with unequaled 
energy and effectiveness. 

Now if these be the acknowledged facts of its history, they 
call for some candid examination of its economy. For without 
stumbling into the fallacy of false cause, we may believe that 
its successes are due, in an appreciable degree, to the forms of 
organization and activity under which they have been won. 
Looking sympathetically, then, at the structure and methods of 
Episcopal Methodism, we shall not find it difficult to note such 
traits as the following: 

1. Its adaptiveness. All growth is conditioned upon a con- 
tinual readjustment of the life within to the world without. And 
Methodism has not been mechanically constructed: it has grown. 
No man or set of men said at its inception, Go to, here is a per- 
fect architectural design, let us build an ecclesiastical city, and 
a tower that shall reach to heaven. There was no plan drawn 
beforehand, either with or without “specifications.” This vigor- 
ous Christian agency may best be described not as a building 
but as an enlarging inner life finding successive uniform meth- 
ods of outward expansion. The various features of its economy 
were evolved, as the need of them was felt, in the circumstances 
and opportunities of the time. 

So, likewise, will its future success depend, in large measure, 
upon its power to adapt the one Christian gospel and the one 
Christian experience, in their methods of aggression, to the new 
conditions that are ever arising. Only let it remember that this 
remolding of institutions by their informing ideas is not the 


*The case is put very mildly in the text. In point of fact, early Ameri- 
can Methodism was severely discredited by all the older Churches. “Hard 
by the Dutch church stood a smaller and less pretentious chapel [John 
Street Methodist Chapel, New York City] on whose worshipers Episco- 
palians and Dissenters alike looked down with horror not unmixed with 
contempt.” (McMaster, “History of the People of the United States,” Vol. 
., p. 56.) The instance seems to have been fairly typical. 


516 Christianity as Organized 


work of a day. Normally a slow and gradual process, it calls 
for the patience of hope as well as the labor of love. 

(2) Its strongly ministerial character. Not officialism, and 
not popular claims and prerogatives, but ministration is empha- 
sized. Not the rule of the bishop nor the rule of the layman, but 
the Conference of ministers and preachers—the evangelical min- 
istrative element—has always been most prominent. 

As to its ministers, none are unemployed; as to its pulpits, 
none are vacant.’ Appointments to the pastorate are made un- 
der a recognized law, which avoids the two congregational evils 
of the indefinitely long endurance of an unfit incumbent of the 
office, and the rending of a church in the effort to effect a change. 
There is not a moment’s inter-regnum: the same word that ends 
one pastorate sets up another. 

This method of pastoral supply affords the people variety and 
fullness of Christian preaching, gives the preacher a regulated 
opportunity to use his resources and accumulated materials in a 
new field,” and tends to the revival of interest and activity in 
the church. 

Moreover, the position of the minister is assured by the Con- 
ference, not by the people, and is therefore most favorable to 


*“Unemployed ministers lying around promiscuously, hunting for a job, 
committees on pastoral supply bombarded with testimonials and with letters 
of recommendation, and sometimes disgusted with the shameless scrambling 
of applicants, Churches going pastorless for months, sampling an endless 
series of prospective pastors—all these abominations exist among us. I 
is not that we Baptists have any monopoly of this wretched business, bu 
surely our Churches are suffering, and will continue to suffer from thes 
evils unless they themselves apply the remedy.” (Dargan, “Ecclesiology,” 
p. 186.) 

“The merely physical influence of frequent change of scene and t 
animation that arises from contact with fresh congregational surfaces—i 
so we may speak—and the opportunity afforded to active-minded preachers 
to amend their style in entering upon a new circuit, and, not the leas 
among these advantages of itinerancy, that knowledge of mankind whic 
it may impart, all tend to promote the preacher’s improvement, to give 
him a just confidence in himself, to render him fearless of individual coun 
tenances, and to fix upon his ministrations a character of force, animatio' 
and freshness.” (Isaac Taylor, ‘““Wesley and Methodism,” p. 219.) 


i The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism 817 
' fidelity in declaring the whole word of God and in administering 
_ discipline in the congregation. Like a prophet of old, he is sent 
fi rather than called; and all that can be done is done to free him 
_ from the temptations of fear and of favor, that he may fully 
_ declare his Master’s message. 

Here, let us imagine, are a hundred churches to be supplied 
with ministers as preachers, pastors, administrators, leaders in 
' Christian enterprise. Here, on the other hand, are a hundred 
“ministers ready for such service. Traveling to and fro contin- 
ually among churches and ministers, making acquaintance with 
them all, are also a company of five or six superintendents, whose 
| duty it is, according to a voluntary agreement between both 
| parties, to appoint these ministers to these churches. Now is it 
less or is it more likely that a better adjustment of the workers 
to the work will be made than if each of these hundred churches, 
large or small, strong or feeble in resources, should have to seek 
out and persuade into acceptance its own minister, among the 
“many, employed and unemployed, throughout the land? Un- 
doubtedly there is a significant difference between the two poli- 
ties. Which would seem to be, upon the whole, the more eco- 
nomical of ministerial forces? 

(3) Its utilization of lay workers. In the earlier days the 

minister was almost wholly an evangelist: the class leader was 
the local pastor. Always the ideal, variously embodied, has been 
the working church. 
- (4) Its unity. Not only the Conference but also the two 
features of organization that chiefly distinguish Episcopal Meth- 
‘odism from other ecclesiastical polities—namely, the itinerancy 
and the general superintendency—are notable bonds of union. 
‘The ministers, passing regularly from charge to charge, are in- 
fluential, as servants of the whole body of churches, to prevent 
congregational exclusiveness or isolation, and promote oneness 
of interest and endeavor. As to the itinerant general superin- 
tendency, its superiority, from the standpoint of unity, to a dio- 
cesan episcopate, or any other historic form of episcopal (not 
papal ) government, will hardly be denied. 


518 Christianity as Organized 


(5) Its organized aggressiveness. All its forces may readily 
be concentrated, under authoritative personal leadership, upon 
home evangelization, church extension, foreign missions, educa- 
tion, temperance, or any other imperative Christian cause. It is 
preeminently a church militant, an army under strong command, 
ever on the march or in the field.’ 


10. PERILS. 


But an enlightened criticism will also charge Episcopal Meth- 
odism with defects which show corresponding perils: 

(1) Its connectional organization offers peculiar temptations to 
strong-willed men or clever ecclesiastical politicians, whose spir- 
ituality may be corrupted and whose usefulness more than im- 
paired by the passion for prominence and power. “Every cowl 
may dream of the tiara.” Under a congregational government 
the opportunity of ecclesiastical ambition, with its subtle self- 
delusions and its fateful effects, is reduced to what would seem 
to be its lowest dimensions, while under a strongly centralized 
and officered government it reaches its maximum.” 

(2) It asks of its bishops and presiding elders, in making their — 
numerous nominations and appointments, a wisdom, impartiality, 


*“Among Protestants we may compare with our Churches the compact- 
ness and power of the Methodist Church. In admiring the system and 
energy which characterize the Methodists, let us not overlook the fact 
that both their Churches and individuals here and there protest vigorously 
when their independence is invaded by the power of the governing body. 
Perhaps they show a greater efficiency in actual work, but do they not lose 
a certain freeness and spontaneity?” (Dargan, “Ecclesiology,” p. 144.) 
The lack of “freeness and spontaneity” can hardly be called a notable defect 
of Methodism, while its “system and energy,” though very far below what 
they ought to be, may nevertheless be recognized as facts. 

2“For human nature lies hidden under Episcopal robes, with its steadfast 
inclination to abuse the power intrusted to it; and the greater the power, the 
stronger is the temptation and the worse the abuse.” (Schaff, “Church His- 
ory,” III., 288, 280.) 

“If our ministers and people should ever decline in vital piety, . . . 
the posts of honor and of influence inseparable from our compact organiza- 
tion will change to matters of strife, unknown to the Churches whose gov- 
ernment is less central and vigorous.” (Crane, “Methodism and Its Meth- 


ods,” pp. 44, 45.) 


Be 


; The Episcopal Idea: American Methodism — 519 


and carefulness that must often fail to be realized. A great office 
is easy enough to create, but—who shall fill it from year to year? 
It calls, and oftentimes there is no elect soul to answer. 

(3) It may sometimes be compelled to break upa pastorate pre- 
maturely. Take as an example the case of a city church with 
large evangelistic and missionary opportunities. The plans of 
the outgoing pastor may be disregarded or ill executed by his 
successor, and the church’s undertakings fail through lack of 
continuity in able specialized leadership. 

(4) Inefficient ministers, who, if dependent on a call to the pas- 
torship of a church, would soon perhaps find themselves out of 
employment, and either learn to do well or cease to burden a pas- 
toral charge, may be sustained by the itinerant system and im- 
posed upon a long succession of suffering congregations. 

(5) The frequent and inevitable changes in the pastorate have 
a tendency to induce restlessness and a feverish love of novelty 
in both minister and people. The minister may not bear so pa- 
tiently with the difficulties of his present situation, nor try so 
faithfully to avoid unpleasant or unprofitable relations with mem- 
bers of his congregation, when he knows that the next session 
of the Annual Conference may bring him relief. The people, on 
their part, will be equally lacking in forbearance, and equally an- 
ticipative of a new pastoral appointment—“‘having itching ears.”’ 


The expectation of a perfect ecclesiastical polity would be as 
vain as that of a perfect language. Even the best body of forms 
and methods will show certain defects of their qualities. Ad- 
vantage here will be offset by somewhat of disadvantage there. 
Nor could any universally applicable answer be returned to the 
question, What then is the best available form? But this one 
thing at least may be accepted as undoubtedly true—namely, that 
a church which should gain the wisdom to organize itself in the 
best possible manner would bear the marks of adaptability no 


less than of strength and perpetuity. Its organization would not 


be just the same in one land and in another, just the same to- 
day and to-morrow. Of change for the sake of change it would 


520 Christianity as Organized 


indeed know nothing, but of change for the sake of power in a 
changing environment it would have an ever-recurring experience. 
Not undervaluing the old nor yet shrinking back in timidity — 
from the new, it could neither be described as conservative not 
as radical. It would simply be athrob with life. 


VIII. 
£AB IDEA OF DIVINE RIGHT. 


IF any one form of government be so prescribed of God as to 


make it universally obligatory upon the Church, then, at least 


according to evangelical belief, that form of government will 
be found set forth as obligatory in the New Testament. Is such 
a polity, then, to be found there? This is the question of divine 


tight in church government. 


Let us make sure that the question itself is perfectly clear. 
It is not whether the Church is of divine origin. It is not 
whether the power of government in the Church is of divine 


origin. It is not whether any definite form or forms of govern- 


_ there was originally 


ment are outlined in the New Testament. It is not whether 
that is to say, in the apostolic age—any 


one universal form. 


Nor, again, is it a question of the lawfulness or unlawfulness 
of any particular form of church government existing at the 
present time. Anything is lawful that is not, either directly or 
by fair implication, prohibited. It is lawful, for example, to 
have congregational worship on seven days or on only two days 
of the week, to offer prayer according to a written formulary or 
to pray extempore, to preach with unity of idea from a selected 
passage of Scripture or simply to exhort, to employ instruments 


of music or only the human voice in worship, to administer 


Christian baptism in a church edifice or in the open air, to kneel 
or to sit or to stand or to recline at the table of the Lord. We 
ask concerning these things whether they are expedient, not 
whether they are lawful. Similarly a mode of ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment, not having been divinely prohibited, may be lawful, 
whereas, not having been divinely commanded, it is not man- 
datory.* 


*Stillingfleet, “Irenicum,” Part I., ch. i. 


(521) 


822 Christianity as Organized 


The question is, whether there be satisfactory proof that some 
specific form of church government, whatever it may be, was 
instituted by Christ himself, either immediately in his own spo- 
ken and recorded words, or mediately through the inspiration of 
his Spirit in the mind of the Apostles, and thereby made manda- 
tory upon his followers throughout the world and unto the end 
of time. 

The answer has been chiefly in the affirmative. Congrega- 
tionalism, Presbyterianism, Prelacy, Papacy—for them all alike 
the exclusive claim of divine right, as shown in the New Testa- 
ment, has been put forth. Though it cannot be added that the 
boldness of the assertion has always been nicely adjusted to the 
force of the supporting argument. 

But just here is a distinction that eught to be drawn. It may 
be held that a certain form of government is essential to the very 
being of a church; in which case to assert that it exists jure 
divino is to assert that there can be no church without it. This 
is the prelatic and the papal position. 

Or it may be held that no one form of government is essential 
to the very being of a church; in which case to say that some 
particular form is jure divino is to assert that, while there may 
be a true church, there cannot be a regularly—. e., scripturally, 
—organized church without it. A Christian society, therefore, 
which, though possessing the gospel and the sacraments, misses 
the scriptural organization suffers loss, but does not thereby in- 
validate its title to recognition as a church of Jesus Christ. This 
seems to be the Low-Church Episcopal, the Presbyterian, the 
earlier Congregational, and the Baptist position.” 


“Differences of view in relation to ecclesiastical polity need be no bar to 
mutual recognition and reciprocity. It seems to us that that should be con- 
fessed to be a true Church of Christ, in which His Spirit manifests His 
saving and sanctifying power, in which His truth is professed, His Word 
preached, and His ordinances dispensed; and it may be so confessed even 
by those who hold a theory of Church polity according to which its organiz¢ - 
tion is imperfect and irregular.’”’ (Committee on Church Unity of the Pres- 
byterian General Assembly in 1887.) 


The Idea of Divine Right 523 


I. THE EXEGETIC ARGUMENT. 


Now the exegetic proofs of the claim of an ecclesiastic divine 
right are not of the highest order. They belong to that multi- 
tudinous class of well-intentioned arguments that bring convic- 
tion chiefly to those who have it already, or who for some reason 
are strongly predisposed to receive it. It is mainly on other than 
exegetic grounds that the idea has been cherished. Often neither 
Scripture nor logic but some sentiment or desire has appeared as 
father to the thought. 

First of all, perhaps, is the desire to have the path of duty 
and achievement clearly marked out. For would not one be thus 
spared the labor of painfully finding it for one’s self? I once 
heard a prominent religious leader say: “It will be a blessed thing 
to get to heaven, where we shall be told what to do and shall only 
have to do it.” No more thinking and deciding for ourselves: 
to the mind weary and perplexed with either speculative or prac- 
tical problems, that may seem-indeed the essential joy of the 
heavenly rest. Let some one whose authority is acknowledged 
and whose person is revered utter his commands, and the whole 
energy of loyal minds will be employed in doing them. The 
division of mental energy between planning, originating, judg- 
ing, and then executing the plan, is what tries men’s strength. 
It is a sweet mental narcotic that steals into the soul of him who 
consents to say, Our form of church government is divinely or- 
dered, and we are not responsible except for maintaining it. 

Not only is such a sentiment restful to the mind, but it also 
greatly exalts the organization of one’s church in one’s own 
eyes. It is in itself a powerful senffment: This form that I love 
and am identified with is of divine ordering—a sacred trust from 
Christ himself. Not only expedient: that were a feeble idea in 
comparison. Not only established and existing as a fact: that 
is true even of the political organizations under which we live. 
Not only ancient, approved, agreeable to the Scriptures. But of 
direct divine right; attested by the seal of Christ and his Apos- 
tles; no human arrangement, but a tabernacle built according to 
the pattern shown in the Mount of God. Is it any wonder the 


524 Christianity as Organized 


feeling awakened by such a conception should seem to be suffi- 
cient unto itself? 

Besides, the exigencies of controversy have had much to do 
with the maintenance of this high claim. Especially since the 
spiritual despotism of Rome was broken, in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, have there been many separate ecclesiastical bodies and 
much controversy. Each church has contended for its own right — 
to be. How shall it make good the contention? The short and 
simple method would be not to show that its constitution and 
economy are reasonable, or effective, or expedient, or in accord- — 
ance with Scripture precedent; but to show that they are scrip- 
turally authoritative. And this is fhe method that has usually 
been followed. 

Still again, the controversial position that a certain type of 
church organization has an exclusive divine right to be, is much 
stronger practically than the position that no type of church or- 
ganization has such a right. I have heard baptism by immersion 
recommended to a company of young Christians, on the ground 
that, while many persons who had been baptized by sprinkling 
or pouring were troubled with doubts as to the validity of their 
baptism, nobody baptized by immersion ever had such a doubt; 
and that it is good common sense to choose that mode of the 
ordinance which everybody acknowledges as genuine. Similarly 
a Roman Catholic priest might say to men hesitating between the 
Roman Catholic and the Episcopal communion: “Even Episco- 
palians acknowledge ours to be a true church, but we deny with 
the utmost assurance that theirs is a true church: choose, there- 
fore, that church about whose genuineness there is no doubt on 
either side.” Ora similar bit of this reasoning (argumentum ad 
timorem) might be used by a Protestant Episcopal minister with 
reference to his own communion and non-episcopal communions. 
All such arguments, though not intellectually convincing, are 
adapted to practical effectiveness, because of their strong appeal 
to a motive of self-love—namely, the desire to be on the safe 
side. So the church that asserts a divine right to its organization 
has a practical advantage over one that denies all such assertions; 


The Idea of Divine Right 525 


for if the former prove its claim, there may be loss or danger at- 
tendant upon membership in the latter, whereas if the latter make 
good its denial, even then the two simply stand together on the 
same plane. Who would not prefer in everything to be on the 
safe side? 

But a not uncommon effect of controversy is to strengthen 
each party in adherence to his own views rather than to over- 
throw the opposing proposition. And it has doubtless been so a 
thousand times in this case. The ecclesiologists believed and 
loved that which they contended for, and grew stronger apace 
in their convictions. 


2. A PrRIorI CONSIDERATIONS. 


Let it not be rashly supposed, however, that no argument wor- 
thy of the name has been adduced in support of the jure divino 
idea in ecclesiastical polity. 

To begin with, there is an apparent presumption in its favor. 
Might we not expect a priori that the constitution, offices, and 
organization of the Church would be given it, at the beginning, 
by its Divine Founder? Shall these matters, which mean so 
much for the accomplishment of its mission, be left to the im- 
perfect wisdom of successive generations of men?” Moreover, 


“Tf therefore we did seek to maintain that which most advantageth our 
own cause, the very best way for us and the strongest against them [ec- 
clesiastical opponents] were to hold, even as they do, -that in Scripture 
there must needs be found some particular form of church polity which God 
hath instituted, and which for that very cause belongeth to all churches, to 
all times. But with any such partial eye to respect ourselves, and by cun- 
ning to make those things seem the truest which are fittest to serve our 
purpose, is a thing which we neither like nor mean to follow.” (Hooker, 
“Ecclesiastical Polity,” Bk. III., sec. 10.) 

“Whether we look abroad upon the symmetry of creation at large, or at 
home on the smallest arrangement of His hand, we see regulation designed, 
both mediately and immediately, by himself. And can we believe that he 
would build the most favored construction of his hands with accident and 
confusion allowed, as men left to themselves have always built toward heaven 
since they were confounded on the plains of Shinar?” (McGill, “Church 
Government,” p. 27.) But such a mode of putting the question disregards, | 
among other things, the difference between the Divine method in the natural 
creation and in the sphere of moral personalities. 


526 Christianity as Organized 


have we not here a prototype in the Old Testament? Was not 
the Church of Israel organized and governed according to a rev 
elation from God? Was not the law that came through Moses 
ecclesiastical as well as moral? Let us, then, in like manner 
look to the New Testament for the organic form no less tha 
the faith of the Church of Christ. Still further, if the Scriptures” 
be taken as a divinely authorized teaching of doctrines and mor. 
als, why not also as a divinely authorized teaching of structural 
Christianity ? 

It must be acknowledged, however, that we find such presup 
positions quite unable to bear the test of an impartial scrutiny 
It is a very inexperienced theologian that will ascribe any great 
worth to a priori ideas as to what kind of revelation God must 
have given us in the Bible—what we shall and what we shall not 
find in this revealed Law and Testimony. Only confusion is 
wrought by reading into the Bible our own ideas as to what the 
Bible ought to be. Rather let us learn what it is. For “who 
hath directed the spirit of the Lord or being his counselor hath 
taught him?” Should we have expected, for example, that the 
Old ‘Festament would lay down directions both clear and explicit 
concerning the use of meats, and make no clear and explicit di 
closure of the future life? 

Again, the presumption that a divine authorization of a fixed 
ecclesiastical structure in Israel will be reproduced in Christiani: 
ty loses all its force when the difference between the two great 
eras in the Church’s history are borne in mind.’ Israel, being but 
a child, had to be taught and directed as a child: Christianity i 


1“Tf when the limits of the Church were a solitary nation the form of 
her government was ordained with awful sanction by her Head, now, when 
she is expansive as the globe, embracing in her mission every kindred, nation 
tongue, and people, must we not have a similar economy provided by t 
same adorable Supremacy?” (McGill, “Church Government,” p. 31.) Bu 
does not the fact of the world-wide extension of the Church make a divinely 
prescribed and mvariable form of government less rather than more likely 
.than in the case of a single little nation set apart, in her intellectual and re- 
ligious chilhood, “under guardians and stewards until the term appointed 
of the father?” 


d 


i 
* 


The Idea of Divine Right 527 


spiritual manhood, freedom, responsibility. The child is gov- 


-erned predominantly by rules; the man, by principles. So there 


was much in Israel which, while preparatory to Christianity, 
could not be prototypical of it. Take, as an example, the union 


of Church and State; or the elaborate and minutely prescribed 


system of public worship; or the “bleeding bird and bleeding 
beast” offered in daily sacrifice. Did these institutions forecast, 
unless indeed by way of antithesis, the constitution and ritual of 
the Church of the New Covenant? The book of Leviticus has 
no congener among the books of the New Testament. 

As to the analogical argument drawn from the divinely re- 
vealed doctrines and morals of Scripture, its force is neutralized 
by the consideration that doctrines and morals being always and 
everywhere the same, may be delivered to men by the Spirit of 
truth once for all; while world-wide experience has shown that 
there is no one form of government, in either Church or State, 
that is best for all peoples, under all circumstances, and through 
the successive centuries and millenniums of human history.’ 

Some controvertists, also, have ventured to assert that a divine- 
ly prescribed and unchangeable form is necessary to good gov- 
ernment in the Church; that the absence of it must result in an- 
archic confusion and an open door to all doctrinal errors. Such 


*“God never ordained anything that could be bettered. Yet many things 
he hath [ordained] that have been changed, and that for the better. That 
which succeedeth as better now when change is requisite had been worst 
when that which now is changed was instituted. . . . There is no reason 
in the world wherefore we should esteem it as necessary always to do as 
always to believe the same things; seeing every man knoweth that the mat- 


' ter of faith is constant, the matter contrariwise of action daily changeable, 


especially the matter of action belonging unto Church Polity.” (Hooker, 


_ “Ecc. Polity,” Bk. IIT, sec. 10.) 


“Tf when monarchical ideas were dominant in the state, the primitive 
church adopted an Episcopal form of government, it does not follow that 


y episcopacy is the best polity in a democratic age. If, on the other hand, the 


little groups of believers were organized on the Congregational plan in the 


i early days when the infant church could count but few adherents, it does 
not follow that that form of polity is the one best fitted to organize the uni- 


versal Church and to conduct world-wide activities.’ (Hyde, “Outlines of 


_ Social Theology,” pp. 199, 200.) 


528 Christianity as Organized 


an argument, besides being ill supported by the facts to which if 
makes appeal, is unwarrantably distrustful of the intellectual 
capacity of the Lord’s people and the promised leadership of th 
Spirit of truth. For what is a church? Christian learners, with 
the pledged presence of the Master in the midst for perpetua 
guidance and grace.” 

But let us listen now to the exegetic arguments. This partic 
ular form of government is authoritatively set forth in the Nea 
Testament as universal and unchangeable: that is the propositior 
which is to be proved in the interest of the Congregational, ot 
the Presbyterian, or the Prelatic, or the Papal idea of ecclesias 
tical polity. 

The literature of the subject is abundant enough; but our re 
view of the courses of proof must needs be extremely brief. 


3. THE CONGREGATIONAL ARGUMENT. 


It is maintained that in the New Testament no general chure 
government is recognized; that each local congregation is inde 
pendent of all others, and is governed by the vote of the people 
The principal passages adduced in proof are the following: A 
to discipline, in Matthew xviii. 17 our Lord teaches that it is 
be exercised by “‘the church,’ and in 1 Corinthians v. 3-5, 13 
and 2 Corinthians ii. 6 we have an instance of this congrega 
tional discipline; as to election of officers, Acts i. 15-26 and 
2-6 show that, in the case of choosing a successor to the traitor 


“Equally detrimental to the soundness of saving truth, and even th 
liberty with which Christ has made us free, is the opposite and comparativel 
unhistorical extreme of anarchy in church government, claiming that mnt 
polity is given in the Bible, and that expediency is all we have by divine righ 
for any constructure of ecclesiastical form. Observation assures us 


that churchly communism will choke even its own freedom with vapors of th 
worst intolerance.” (McGill, “Church Government,” pp. 29, 30.) But th 
Lutheran and the Methodist Churches, to cite no others, organized dis 
tinctly on the basis which the author here thoughtlessly describes as “anarch 
in church government,” seem as far as possible from “churchly communism, 
and have never yet, I believe, suffered a distinctly doctrinal division. 


The Idea of Divine Right 529 


apostle and of choosing the Seven, the election was by the entire 
congregation; and as to legislation, in Acts xv. 4, 22, 23 we learn 
that the council which decided upon the regulations to be im- 
posed upon the Gentile converts was composed, not of the rep- 
resentatives of a number of churches, but of the one church of 
the city of Jerusalem, and that this church acted not through 
representatives or officers of any kind but as an assembled con- 
gregation, Apostles, elders, brethren. 

It is further maintained that those passages which, if they 


stood alone, might suggest a different mode of government (as, 


for instance, Acts xiv. 23, I Timothy v. 22, Titus i. 5), may all 
be understood consistently with the passages which decisively 
teach congregational government. 

It is still further maintained that this polity, as it appears in 
the New Testament, is a binding precedent to be perpetually fol- 
lowed by all the churches of Christ throughout the world. 
“Such,” it is held, “was the Church He organized, and such He 
requires his Church still to be. He may bear for a time with 
deviations from his plan; but he cannot approve them, he cannot 
give them his sanction. . . . The Church of the New Testa- 
ment is our pattern tabernacle in the Mount. No deviation is 
allowed; not the least.’”* It was a point on which synods and 
individual theologians were well agreed. The Cambridge Plat- 
form, adopted by a synod of the New England Congregational 
churches in 1648, explicitly pronounces that “the parts of church 
government are all of them exactly described in the word of 
God, and therefore to continue one and the same, unto the ap- 
pearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and declares that therefore 
“it is not left in the power of men, officers, churches, or any state 


*Sawyer, “Organic Christianity,” p. 92. 

The divine right of Congregationalism is very pronounced in the ec- 
clesiologic teaching of Nathaniel Emmons, the first article of which as 
epitomized by Dr. D. M. Dexter is the following: “1. A specific form of 
church government was instituted by Christ in the eighteenth of Matthew— 
which is Congregationalism.” (Dexter, “Congregationalism as Seen in Its 
Literature,” pp. 507, 508.) 


34 


530 Christianity as Organized 


in the world, to add, diminish, or alter anything in the least 
measure therein.” 

Now the congregational independence of the apostolic church- 
es may be accepted as a reasonably certain historic fact. There 
is good evidence of their intercongregational unification in faith 
and experience as a Christian fraternity; but there is no good 
evidence of their consolidation under a common government. 

That each congregation, however, was governed simply and 
solely by the vote of the people has not been made clear. As to 
Matthew xviii. 17, the case to which our Lord’s instructions 
here apply is not that of an ordinary church trial: it is a case 
of interposition on the part of the church, at the request of a 
wronged brother, with the aim of reconciling the offender. 

In connection with the excommunication of the immoral 
church member by the Corinthian congregation, the directions of 
the apostle Paul to Timothy and Titus, which seem to give the 
pastor special authority in cases of discipline, might be quoted.” 

From the facts that the disciples in the “upper room,” await- 
ing Pentecost, elected Matthias (by lot) as a vice-apostle, to com- 
plete the original number of the chosen witnesses of the Resur- 
rection, and that the whole multitude of disciples in Jerusalem 
elected the Seven to be set apart to a ministry, not of the word, 
nor of pastoral oversight, but of “tables,” it does not follow that 
the elders who were ordained by the Apostles and others were 
also selected by the votes of the people.” They may have been. 
What little we know of the customs of the sub-apostolic age 


*Cambridge Platform, Ch. L., 3. 

*1 Tim. iii. I-13; v. 19, 20; Titus i. 5-9; iii. 10. I should not venture to 
say, with some, that “the regulations about the character to be required in 
bishops and deacons imply that Timothy was in a position to appoint them;” 
but it strongly suggests that he had mueh to do with their appointment—say, 
the power of nomination or of veto. 

And surely the authority not to receive an accusation against an elder, 
except at the mouth of two or three witnesses, and to reprove him, if found 
guilty, in the presence of the whole congregation, and, in the case of Titus, 
to admonish and after a second admonition “refuse” a factious man, mean 
something more than the mere chairmanship of the congregational meeting. 

*Acts xiv 235) 1 Dina y.l223) Pitas) 5, 


: 
: 
| 
: 
. 
: 


The Idea of Divine Right 531 


| favors the supposition. But the inference that it must have been 
_ so is no more justifiable a conclusion than is the contrary infer- 
' ence, that if it were so some distinct mention would have been 
~ made of the fact. 

| In Acts xv. it is related that when the great question as to 
) the conditions of the salvation of others than the Jewish people 
| arose in Antioch a delegation was sent “to Jerusalem unto the 
| Apostles and elders about this matter.” Does it seem likely that 
| the Apostles and elders would commit the decision of it to the 
_ whole membership of the church in Jerusalem, instead of accept- 
ing it as their own responsibility? Nor do we read that the de- 
| cision of the matter was committed to the whole church, but only 
| that they were present to hear the statement of it by the brethren 
| from Antioch (v. 4), and were associated with the Apostles and 
elders in choosing messengers to convey the letter containing the 
decision to the church in Antioch (v. 22). It is possible, in- 
_ deed, that the “brethren” gave a full and formal vote, and thus, 
constituting as they did by far the larger part of the assembly, 
_ decided the question; but it may rather be supposed that they 
only approved of the decision of the Apostles and elders. And 
this supposition is strengthened by the record in Acts xvi. 4, 
that as Paul and Silas went through Asia Minor they “deliv- 
ered them the decrees to keep which had been ordained by the 
Apostles and elders that were at Jerusalem.” 

Again, the Congregational argument does but scant justice to 
the office of the Apostles—of Paul, for example, taking upon 
himself anxiety for all the churches, and appointing Timothy 
and Titus as his deputies to ordain presbyters and to set things 
in order in their respective fields of labor. For the apostolate 
May quite reasonably be regarded as indicating more than the 
local and temporary need of a general superintendency. It may 
‘be taken as giving sanction to some form of subsequent epis- 
copal oversight. 

The argument fails also, and more conspicuously, to do justice 
to the administration of government by presbyters in the New 
Testament churches. For it is extremly difficult to identify the 


——— 


F 


— 
the 


532 Christianity as Organized 


one elder, or pastor—the one-man ministry—of a modern Con- 
gregationalist or Baptist church with the board of elders that 
presided in at least some of the New Testament churches.” 

But even were it indubitably proved both that all the apostolic 
churches were independent of each other, and that they were all 
under strictly popular government, the conclusion would not fol- 
low that the same form of administration and no other is in- 
cumbent on every congregation in the Church of Christ of every 
land and age. The implied major premise (if a technical term 
be permitted)—namely, that the mode of government in the 
New Testament Churches is obligatory upon all churches—not 
being a self-evident proposition, must be proved; and no proof 
has yet been discovered. 

It will not do simply to insist that we ought to follow New 
Testament precedents. For no one will say that we ought to 
follow them all; and so the question will arise concerning any 
one of them, Is this a binding precedent? Many, indeed, are 
the New Testament usages, real or supposed, that have been 
taken by Christian churches at one time and another as binding 
precedents. Thus have been adopted and enforced such obsery- 
ances or offices as the casting of lots, feet-washing, the office of 
teacher as distinct from that of preacher or pastor, baptism in 
running water, the kiss of charity, the weekly celebration of the 
Lord’s Supper, anointing the sick with oil, the plural eldership, 
the office of ruling elder as distinct from teaching elder. In like 
manner the love feast of the apostolic churches might be fol- 
lowed as a binding precedent; and so might still other customs 
of the earliest Christian age. But are all or any of these in- 
tended as authoritative examples showing what must be the prac- 
tice of the Church in all places and in all ages? “When Scrip- 
ture doth yield us precedents,” saith Richard Hooker, “how fa 
forth they are to be followed, this must be by reason found 
out.”” Otherwise, fanaticism may find opportunity. 


*Ladd, “Principles of Church Polity,’ pp. 25-29, 215. 
“The binding nature of New Testament precedent and of apostolic ap- 
pointments cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand as if these appoint- 


| 


The Idea of Divine Right 533 


True, it is an unceasing Christian endeavor and joy in such a 
matter to imitate apostolic example. But to imitate is not to 
copy. It is oftener to do something different. It is to open 
one’s mind to a truth, and one’s heart to a spirit, made real 
through some personality. It is not to reproduce a form. Wide 
is the distinction between a Scripture principle and a Scripture 
precedent. The principle is regulative; the precedent, interpre- 
tative. 

But this idea of divine right in church government, it must be 
added, is not characteristic of the Congregationalism of the 
present generation. It is a faith of the fathers that has been 
outgrown. The Congregational churches of to-day do not take 
the churches of the apostolic age as the absolutely authoritative 
pattern after which all their successors must be modeled, in our 
own age and in every other. - Nor do they find in any word of 
the New Testament, either directly or inferentially, a prescribed 
form of government for the Church universal. They only pro- 
fess to see in their own economy a more satisfactory embodiment 
of ihe principles of the New Testament than in any other.” 

Nor has Congregationalism refused communion with the 
churches outside its own order. Robert Browne, its eccentric 
founder, did so; but in this he has never had an appreciable fol- 


ments were appropriate only in the apostolic age.” (Dargan, “Ecclesiology,” 
p. 22.) But neither can it be assumed. It calls for proof. It is not, indeed, 
to be “dismissed with a wave of the hand,” but just as certainly it “must 
be by reason found out.” 

1“There is no form of church government authoritatively set forth to 
be followed by any or by all the followers of Christ. A careful reading of 
the early records shows a method then followed corresponding more nearly 
to the congregational way than to any other.” (Boynton, “The Congrega- 
tional Way,” p. 20.) 

“We have no objection to a number of churches organizing under a 
bishop of their own appointment, to whom a large amount of responsibility 
for their general conduct shall be given. Indeed, we can see under many 
conditions how this may be proper and wise. Nor do we know of any 
reason why it is not allowable for individual churches to put authority, which 
they might not think it best to exercise alone, into the hands of the whole 
or of a group.” (Jbid., p. 17. See, to the same effect, Ladd, “Principles of 
Church Polity,” pp. 9, 10.) 


534 Christianity as Organized 


lowing. Pastor John Robinson and his congregation at Leyder 

for example, though Brownists rather than Barrowists, stood 
for fellowship with other Christian churches. So with Con- 
gregationalists generally from that day till now. To deny the 
validity of either the ministry or the sacraments of their sister 
churches would be alien to both their creed and their spiri 

They are catholic, not sectarian. In fact, they are conspicuously 
in sympathy with the forces of American Christianity that are 
making for codperation and unity.’ 


4. THE PRESBYTERIAN ARGUMENT. 


It is probable that many Presbyterians would not claim more 
for their polity than that it is most excellent and entirely agree 
able to the Scriptures.” But the jure divino theory of ecclesias- 


*“Thus recognizing the unity of the Church of Christ in all the work 
and knowing that we are but one branch of Christ’s people, while adheri 
to our own peculiar faith and order, we extend to all believers the hand 
of Christian fellowship upon the basis of those great fundamental truth 
in which all Christians should agree.” (Declaration of Faith of the Na- 
tional Council of Congregational Churches, June 14-24, 1865.) 

Tt is affirmed by some that this form of Church government is att 
thoritatively and exclusively enjoined in the Scriptures; that it is therefor 
of universal obligation, and that no other is of Divine right. They clain 
to be ‘jure divino Presbyterians. The great body of Presbyterians, how 
ever, are content to claim simply that their views are clearly sanctioned b 
Scripture.” (Dr. E. F. Hatfield, in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Art. “Pres 
byterianism.”) 

Take, for example, three eminent Presbyterian authorities of Scotlan 
and America: 

“As to ecclesiastical administration, the New Testament supplies 
neither with a definite form of polity nor with a directory of worship; a 
it is only when we perceive that it was not its purpose to do so that 
rise to the idea of the unity and spirituality of the Church as the Apostle 
conceived it.” (Forrest, “The Christ of History and of Experience,” p. 286.) 

“Such was the contribution of Jesus toward the shaping of the futur 
character of his Church. He provided for it no ecclesiastical constitutio 
issued no authoritative instructions concerning forms of church government 
clerical offices and orders, or even worship.” (Bruce, “The Kingdom 0 
God,” p. 270.) 

“As there is no definite form of church government prescribed in thi 
precepts of Christ, neither is there any enacted in the example of the Apostles 


i 


The Idea of Divine Right 535 


tical organization is the theory of Presbyterianism as such. It 
is true that in the Form of Government adopted by the West- 
minster Assembly no higher claim is made for presbyterial or- 
der than that it “is lawful and agreeable to the word of God.” 
But this is not because it was entitled to no higher claim in the 
minds of probably a large majority of the Assembly. It is be- 
cause the Assembly was legislating in an irenic spirit—trying to 
avoid all possible offense to Episcopacy and Independency. It is 
certain that the divine right of Presbytery was strongly main- 
tained in that day. “I dare assure myself,” said John Milton in 
the earlier part of his controversial career, “that every true Prot- 
estant, . . . even for the reason of it so coherent with the 
doctrine of the gospel, beside the evidence of command in Scrip- 
ture, will confess it to be the only true church government.””* 
And such a confession has been made, though not by “every true 
Protestant,’ both personally and officially, unto the present time.” 


: No man can deduce any of the existing forms of church government 
in their detailed arrangements, or even in their distinctive features, from the 
facts recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, nor from the precepts given in 
the Epistles; and the wisest expositors have given up the hopeless attempt.” 
(Van Dyke, “The Church: Her Ministry and Sacraments,” p. 52.) 

*Cf. Morris, “Theology of the Westminster Symbols,” p. 636; Fairbairn, 
“Studies in Religion and Theology,” p. 153. 

A line of presbyterial ordinations from the Apostles was also asserted and 
emphasized. . The Provincial Assembly of London in 1654 declared, for exam- 
ple: “Our mimistry is derived to us from Christ and his Apostles by suc- 
cession of a ministry continued in the Church for 1,600 years. We have 
(1) a lineal succession from Christ and his Apostles.” (Briggs, “American 
Presbyterianism,” pp. 3, 68-71.) 


2“That our blessed Saviour . . . hath appointed officers not only to 
preach the gospel and administer the sacraments, but also to exercise dis- 
cipline. . . . The ordinary and perpetual officers in the Church are 


Bishops or Pastors; the representatives of the people, usually styled Ruling 
Elders; and Deacons.” (Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States of America, chaps. I. iii. and III. ii.) 

“Christ, as King, has given to his Church officers, oracles, and ordinances; 
and especially has he ordained therein his system of doctrine, government, 
discipline, and worship; all which are either expressly set down in Scripture 
or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced therefrom; and to 
which things he commands that nothing be added, and that from them naught 


536 Christianity as Organized 


In the application, however, of the three laws—the parity of 
the ministry, the right of the people to a part in church govern- 
ment, and the governmental unity of the Church—that are be- 
lieved to be authoritatively laid down in the New Testament, 
there is considerable divergence of view. Some would regard 
them as a more exclusive system than do others. That is to say, 
some would act on the principle that nothing may be done but 
what is either directly or by fair inference commanded; others, 
that anything may be done but what is either directly or by fair 
inference forbidden. Dr. John H. Thornwell, for example, op- 
posed, with all the force of his keen logic and fervent eloquence, 
the organization of missionary boards, on the ground that they 
were not provided for in Scripture; while Dr. Charles Hodge 
approved them as expedient institutions on the ground that they 
were not forbidden by any of the three New Testament laws of 
church organization." This broader view is the more prevalent. 

Presbyterianism has much to say that is strong and Scriptural 
on behalf of its polity. It finds government by elders in ancient 
Israel, in the Jewish synagogue, and in the apostolic churches. 
It finds the Apostles themselves to have been elders ;* and hence 
to “inquire of the Apostles and elders’? about the proper rules 
for Gentile converts’-—was it not to inquire of a presbytery? 
On the very first great missionary tour Paul and Barnabas “or- 
dained elders in every church,’* and later Paul left Titus in 
Crete that he might “ordain elders in every city.”” In Hebrews 


be taken away.” (Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States, Par. 10.) 

“Such order and ordinances as the very nature of the Church called for, 
and because such as the nature of the Church called for, were ordained from 
the first as to their substance, and as to their form modified during the 
progressive steps of the revelation, under the direct administration of the 
King in Zion, and through men immediately inspired, until their forms were 
fixed and left to be permanent at the close of the revelation.” (Stuart | 
Robinson, “The Church of God,” pp. 121, 122.) ; 

1Thornwell’s Collected Writings, Vol. IV., pp. 217-241, and Appendix, B. 
See pp. 403, 404. 

27 Pet. v. 1; 2 John 1. SActs xiv. “Acts xiv. 23. ’Titus i. 5. 


The Idea of Divine Right 537 


_ we read, “Remember them that have the rule over you,” and in 
_ Timothy, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of all 
_ honor;”* wherefrom it would appear that the presbytery were 
the rulers. 

Concerning this theory it must be said, on the other hand, 
that, like that of Congregationalism, it sees no governmental 
ke significance in the apostolate. Also, the passage, “Especially 


those who labor in the word and in teaching,’ upon which it 


_ fests the constitutional distinction between ruling elders and 


teaching elders, as two distinct and permanent classes of church 
_ officers, is unable to bear the weight of so large an inference. 
Still again, Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians seem to show that, 
in their church, discipline was administered not by elders—of 
whom he makes no mention at all—but by the congregation as 
a whole. It is impossible here to find any semblance of govern- 
ment by a presbytery. 

Difficult also is it to find in the New Testament the form in 
which Presbyterianism embodies the truth of the unity of the 
Church—namely, a series of courts by which a part of the Church 
is brought under the jurisdiction of a larger part, and all parts 
under the jurisdiction of the whole. The most that has been 
_ said for it exegetically is that the church in Jerusalem, and in 
_ other cities, such as Antioch and Corinth, is spoken of in the 
singular number, and yet, being so large, it must have consisted 
of several congregations ;* that the meeting in Jerusalem to con- 
sider the question of Gentile church membership, has some ap- 
| pearance of a council of elders from more than one congrega- 
a tion; that Paul speaks of the Church as one body “fitly framed 
' and knit together, through that which every joint supplieth,” 


pG@re xm. 7 Cf. 1 Nhess. vy. 12; Rom. xu. 8 <7 Tim. v: 17. 

*Tbid. *Acts vill. 13 iv. 43 vi. I. 

*“We are bound to connect in a common representation the churches of 
a populous community, in town or country, to be called Church in the singu- 
lar number, as they called the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, respective- 
| ly, and also to summon general assemblies for the care of such collective ec- 
a clesia, as they did at a council at Jerusalem, to decide on the reference from 
_ Antioch.” (McGill, “Church Government,” pp. 44, 45.) 


538 Christianity as Organized 


and that its bands and joints may not impossibly be supposed t 
be a series of church courts; and that the practice of the Apos 
tles shows that in their conception the Church is one. 

The conclusion in which most minds that are under no pressur 
to maintain a thesis on the subject would probably agree, i 
that the government of the apostolic churches by presbyters only 
and their confederation under a general presbyterial government 
may be accepted as a doubtful hypothesis, but is by no mean 
made good, by the proofs adduced, as a historic certainty. 

And still we must ask as before: Supposing the presbyteriz 
system and no other were proved as obtaining in ancient Israe 
and under apostolic guidance in the first Christian churches, doe 
that alone make it mandatory forever? Would it be schism an 
sectarianism for a Christian congregation, one hundred or tw 
thousand years afterwards, and under widely different cond 
tions, to organize itself, for what seemed to be conclusive rea 
sons, under some other form? Would it even be “irregular?” 

Presbyterianism might answer such a question affirmatively} 
Nevertheless, even in its straitest school, it would not unchure 
its sister churches. Because it holds that wherever the Spirit ¢ 
Christ abides and the truth of the gospel is practiced, there is : 
true church of Christ, however irregular and imperfect in out 
ward form. Its confession is that the Scripture type of organ 
zation is necessary not to the being but only to the perfection ¢ 
a church.’ 


“To refuse to recognize as a Church of Christ any body of associate 
believers united for the purposes of worship and discipline, can be justifie 
only on the ground that some particular form of organization has by Di 
authority been made essential to the existence of the Church. And if esse 
tial to the existence of the Church, it must be essential to the existence 
piety and to the presence and operations of the Holy Spirit. Ubi Spirit 
Sanctus ibi Ecclesia is a principle founded upon the Scriptures and hel 
sacred by evangelical Christians in all ages.” (Hodge, “Church Polity,” 
97-) 

“Our Episcopal brethren honestly differ from us in their views as 1 
the divinely ordained constitution of the Church and of the ministry. W 
think that they have departed from the Apostolic and primitive model; the 
think that we have done so. But the substance ought not to be confounde 


The Idea of Divine Right 539 


5. [HE PRELATIC ARGUMENT. 


Prelacy is not mighty in the Scriptures. Its strength lies oth- 
erwhere. The Congregationalist and the Presbyterian bring their 
systems at once and solely to the judgment of the written Word, 
as the tribunal before which they must stand or fall. But this 
one and sufficient test does not clearly appear in the procedure 
of the prelatist. He is much occupied with the constitutional 
history of the post-apostolic and the medieval Church. He finds 
prelacy, as-a matter of historic fact, largely in possession of the 
field from the third century onward; and there is great power 
and advantage in possession—with many minds it is nine-tenths 
of the argument. He finds a succession of bishops ruling and 
reigning through hundreds of years. These bishops assert that 
the Church is continuous in a tactual line of authoritative over- 
seers, each an ecclesiastic lord, from Christ through the Apos- 
tles unto the present day; and the prelatist allows the claim. 
Apostolic succession appears as a formative principle in church 
history; and he accepts the principle. Then, through searching 
the Scriptures, he finds what he can to confirm the imposing his- 
toric claim—and seems here content, unhappily, with listening to 
the echo of his own ideas. 

This attitude of the prelatic mind is strikingly exemplified in 
Canon (now Bishop) Gore’s apology for the principle of apos- 
tolic succession—“The Church and the Ministry.” The author, 
after preliminary explanations (chs. I., II.), presents tmmediate- 
ly “The Witness of Church History” (ch. III.)—“to exhibit the 
extent to which in church history the principle of the apostolic 
succession has been postulated and acted upon since the time 
when the continuous record begins.” Then he brings forward 
the Scripture argument (ch. IV.). This order, “which treats 
the question, What has the Church in fact believed about her 
ministry? as preliminary to the investigation of her title-deeds,” 


with the form. A church may have unfailing marks of being a true church, 
though it may be imperfectly organized.” (Committee on Church Unity of 
the Presbyterian Church in 1887.) 

oP, KV. 


840 Christianity as Organized 


has been chosen, he explicitly declares, because “it was hardly 
possible for the present writer to treat the question in any othet 
order,” and this because ‘“‘a book had better represent that process 
of ‘labor’ by which its writer’s opinions have been formed.” 

Especially are this class of theologians inclined to ascribe < 
determinative value to the faith and the forms of early Chris 
tianity. Thus the Anglo-Catholic may be found ending his quest 
practically in the Ante-Nicene Church. There he finds the au- 
thoritative model, uncorrupted as yet by the usurpations of 
Rome, in both doctrine and polity, for the subsequent ages. 
There, rather than in the New Testament itself, appears to hi 
the embodiment of the mind of the Master as to the organic 
form of Christianity.” 

But we are concerned only about the Scripture argument for 
the divine right of prelacy; and this having already been giver 
under the title of “The Apostolic Succession,”* need not here be 
repeated. 

And if surprise be felt that so inconclusive an argument as 
that for the divine right of prelacy should by a considerable class 
of cultured minds be regarded as sufficient, let it be remembered 
that to these same minds the New Testament argument for sac- 
erdotalism seems equally satisfactory. For example: “We ac 
cept the Real Presence,’ says Canon Gore in “Roman Catholic 
Claims,” “because (a) it was taught by the Fathers of East and 
West from the first; (b) it is confirmed by the natural meaning 
of our Lord’s words and the language of St. Paul in his epis- 
tles.”’* One who can so read the Gospels and Epistles as to be 
confirmed in his belief that the Apostles were priests, need ex- 
pect no difficulty in finding from the same sources confirmation 


gia Sarat 

“Here, then, the Church of England takes her position, doing her best 
to stand upon the old ways, holding to the ancient principles of the Church 
but refusing to identify medieval dogmas with primitive beliefs, and also re 
fusing, under the pretext [principle] of loyalty to the Scriptures, to disregard 
the early customs and traditions of the apostolic Church.” (William Clark, 
M.A. (Oxon.), “The Anglican Reformation,” p. 459.) 

SPart II., chs. XI, XII. SPOie 


SSS 


The Idea of Divine Right 541 


of the belief that they were prelates and transmitters of prelacy 
to all subsequent ages. 
It is pertinent, though painful, to note also that the breadth 


of practical application which the prelatist claims for his con- 


clusions is inversely proportioned to the strength of argument by 
which they are supported. He would exclude all Christians who 
are not organized under the prelatic polity from membership in 
the Church of Christ. 


6. THE PapaAL ARGUMENT. 


With the Roman Catholic the Church is first. It stands ever- 
more as the one teacher of truth. The Scriptures indeed are in- 
fallible; but they are given as a depositum to the Church, which, 
speaking supremely through the pope, is their only infallible in- 
terpreter. Should the papist, therefore, wish to satisfy his mind 
concerning the divine right of the bishop of Rome to govern all 
Christians, he will not inquire of the Scriptures. He will ask 
the bishop of Rome himself, and rest silent, if not content, with 
the answer. 

This answer, however, will not avail for other inquirers. 
Should they be Protestants, Scriptural proof must be offered. 
“But have we any positive proof,’ asks Cardinal Gibbons, “‘that 
Christ did appoint a supreme ruler over his Church? ‘To those, 
indeed, who read the Scriptures with the single eye of a pure 
intention, the most abundant evidence of this fact is furnished.’”’ 

This evidence is the primacy of Peter. Christ declared that 
upon Peter, as a rock, he would build his Church, and to him 
would he give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.* And this 
investiture of power is supposed to be confirmed by the words, 
“Do thou, when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy breth- 
ren,” and by the charge, “Feed my sheep.’* Also, in the lists 
of the Apostles as given in the Gospels, the name of Peter stands 
first. Then, too, when he had spoken in the council in Jerusa- 
lem, every one kept silence.” 


1“The Faith of Our Fathers,” p. 117. *Matt. xvi. 13-10. 
*Luke xxii. 32. “John xxi, 17. *Acts xy. 12, 


542 Christianity as Organized 


One feels at a loss to determine what is the “pure intention” 
that can find here that “most abundant evidence” of which the 
Cardinal speaks—unless indeed it be the intention to accept with 
unquestioning trust whatever the Roman Church may offer in 
support of her claims. The power of the keys was not only 
promised by Christ to Peter, but was also given both to him and 
to the other Apostles,* and to the Christian congregation.” The 
Church is built “upon the foundation of the Apostles and proph- 
ets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.”* Peter 
was simply first in activity, outspokenness, and honor among the 
original Twelve; it was he that first preached the gospel of Jesus” 
and the Resurrection at Pentecost and to the Gentiles,* claiming 
for himself only to be a “fellow-elder and a witness of the suf- 
ferings of Christ’’—and that was his primacy. James, not 
Peter, was presiding officer of the church in Jerusalem, and ap- 
parently president of the council held there. The silence in the 
council was for the purpose of hearkening to Barnabas and Saul 
—and even were it due to the words that Peter had just spoken, 
it would prove nothing to the point.° The apostle Paul, from 
the beginning of his missionary career, was the chief leader and 
caretaker of the churches; and he acknowledged dependence for 
his apostleship solely upon Christ, not upon Peter or any of the 
Apostles who were before him. It came to him “not from men, 
neither through man [or, a man].’” 

Imagine the Apostle of the Gentiles recognizing a constitu- 
tional authority to control the course of his ministry in Simon 
Peter, and holding himself in readiness to obey his commands. 
True, he was formally set apart, together with Barnabas, to a 
great missionary undertaking whereunto the Spirit of God had 
called him. Not, however, by Simon Peter, nor by any Apostle; 
but with the laying on of the hands, after fasting and prayer, of 
prophets and teachers, his brethren, in the Christian congrega- 
tion of Antioch—whence and not from Jerusalem he went forth.* 


1 John) xox. 22) 22) SEph. ii. 20. ie leteiy Vit AGaleate 
» 23 p 
*Matt. xviii 15-20, “Acts X. ‘Acts xv. Iz) ®Acts xiii, 1-3. 


The Idea of Divine Right 543 


But even supposing, in the face of the whole spirit and teach- 
| ing of the New Testament, that Peter’s primacy was that of “a 
supreme ruler over Christ’s Church,’ the contention that this 
_rulership has been transmitted to the bishops of Rome, making 
them, each in succession, the absolute ruler, final judge, and in- 
fallible teacher of all churches and all Christians, is simply ‘“‘the 
annihilating polemics of assertion.” 

Prelacy and papacy are alike in the exclusiveness of their 
| claim. Obedience to some bishop, in the one case, as obedience 
_to the bishop of Rome, in the other, is accounted necessary to 
. membership in the Church of God. But as to the bishop of 
Rome, those who reject his supremacy are officially anathe- 
matized. 


7. CONCLUSIONS. 


Now among Christians who believe that no particular form 
of outward organization is essential to the existence of the 
Church of Christ, the differences of ecclesiastic structure are not 
of serious import. But when it is put forward as an article of 
faith, that one designated governmental form of Christianity is 
necessary to the Church’s very existence, covenanted grace flow- 
‘ing into human hearts through that channel only, a radically dif- 
ferent conception of the religion of Jesus is involved. So the 
| inquiry now concerns an essential element of the Christian re- 


ligion.* 

If Jesus Christ did organize his Church in a tactual succession 
of bishops, with or without a personal autocratic head, inside 
of which are all the blessings of his covenant and outside of 
which are none, then those who deny this apostolic succession 
/ are chargeable with rebellion against the Divine order and with 
schism in the body of Christ. On the other hand, if Jesus Christ 
| did not so organize his Church, then those who affirm such an 
| apostolic succession are chargeable with these same offenses. 


*“Tn a word, this book claims on behalf of the apostolic succession that it 
must be reckoned with as a permanent and essential element of Christianity.” 
(Gore, “The Church and the Ministry,” p. xiv.) 


544 Christianity as Organized 


Moreover, the burden of proof rests upon those who affi 
The advocates of the sacerdotal episcopal succession must prove 
their case. Until then the demand that it shall be accepted by 
others—save by the unthinking or the will-less—is worse tha 
idle. In the civil courts no man may be condemned so long as 
there remains a reasonable doubt of his innocence. What has 
been the amount and character of the evidence on which, in the 
ecclesiastical court, multiplied millions of evangelic Christians 
have been condemned as having no part nor lot in the covenanted 
blessings of the Church of Christ? | 


It is a true and most sacred idea, that of divine right. Not 
permission only but duty as well are included in it. Nor is there 
any sphere of life and activity from which it can be shut out 
Whatever, being not unlawful, is expedient, may and must be 
done. Either an individual or a society may not only claim the 
right to do it, but must do it because it is right. 

Within these limits of lawfulness and expediency, therefore, 
all church organization is alike jure divino. For such organi- 
zation is something that may be and that ought to be. 

But neither is this all. The supreme constructive force in the 
kingdom of God is not that of rights, nor is it that of the right. 
The Divine Builder of the Church, let it never be forgotten, 
found the symbol of his power and wisdom in the cross. And 
only as sharers in his mind can workers together with him plan 
and build with true success. The heart of love molds and colors 
the outward order. Think of an ecclesiastic economy taking 
form from the question, Which of us shall be greatest? as com- 
pared with one that should be directed by the motive: “For all 
things are for your sakes, that the grace, being multiplied 
through the many, may cause the thanksgiving to abound unto 
the glory of God.” Christianity as organized is to be for service, 
sacrificial and unceasing. Hence its highest formative force: 
“love buildeth up.” : 


CONCLUSION. 
THE PROPHET IN ADMINISTRATION. 


_ Ovr excursion into the field of ecclesiology is here about at 
an end. Its results hardly call for a formal summing up. But it 
seems not unfitting, now at the last, to dwell for a little while, 
in connection with a word of résumé, upon a certain personal 
"qualification in whoever would conduct successfully the business 
_of organized Christianity. 


I. FORMATIVE IDEAS IN CHURCH ORGANIZATION. 


The sources of human power, let us not refuse to be again 
“reminded, are in that which is invisible. They are not to be 
found in muscle or nerve, but in ideas, affections, aspirations, 
choices, plans, purposes. We could live on without the visible 
_world, and before long shall do so. Whatever works, therefore, 
men may produce on earth are wrought out indeed through the 
body, but from and by the unseen conscious self. This is equally 

true, whether the product be a mechanism or an institution— 
ny true of the houses we build and of the social organiza- 
‘tions, political, religious, or other, which may hold meetings in 
them. Whatever else any such things may be, they are visualized 
‘ideas. Take the ideas out of a watch or a pocketknife, and there 
is nothing left. You have robbed timepiece and knife of that 
without which neither of them would or could have come into 
‘existence. Take the ideas out of the organized government of 
the American commonwealth, and there is nothing left to con- 
‘cern yourself about. You have taken away that without which 
no organized government would or could ever have come into 
existence. So, in order to appreciate any mechanical product or 
any institution, it must needs be looked at both from without and 
‘from within—from without to see what it is, from within to 
see what it means. 
_ Now we have been led to recognize in certain ideas—such as 


35 (545) 


546 Christianity as Organized 


fellowship in Christ, social dependence, individualism, divine 
vocation, representation, service, authority and obedience, unity, 
autonomy, evangelism—the true determining forces in church 
organization. 

It follows that for the administration of government in the 
Church there is demanded not only administrative skill but ai 
the same time a distinctly higher personal quality—namely, spir- 
itual insight. For the heart of truth in the ideas must be known 
by him who would give it the most effective practical form of 
expression. 

In the Church of the Old Covenant these two functions may 
be described as prophecy and kingship. On the throne of Israel 
sat, indeed, the king, but beside him stood the prophet. Was i 
by a Divine ordinance that the king reigned? It was likewise a 
Divine word that the prophet spoke." Thus the living voice of 
the men of spiritual insight was no less truly a part of the the 
ocratic polity of the Hebrew Church-State than were the com- 
mands of the monarch or the Book of the Covenant which the 
inspired lawgiver read, beneath the shadow of Sinai, in the hear- 
ing of the people.* 

In the Church of the New Covenant, essentially the same two 
functions, though of course under other than the ancient forms 
make their appearance. “Whether prophecy, let us prophesy; 
“he that ruleth, with diligence.’”* ‘Do the work of an evaw 
gelist;” “that thou shouldest set in order the things that are 
wanting, and appoint elders in every city.”* On the one hand 
the mystery of redeeming love and the spiritual morality of th 
gospel were to be unfolded; on the other, the temporal and goy 
ernmental affairs of the churches were to be administered. 
brief, there was a prophetic ministry—Apostles, prophets, teach 
ers; and there was also a ministry of government—presbyter. 
bishops and deacons. 


*2 Sam. vii. 1-17; 1 Kings xviii. 16-21; 2 Kings ix. 1-7; Isa. xxxvii. 21-35 
xxxix. 1-8. 
2Ex, xxiv. 7. ®Rom. xii. 6, 8 42 Tim. iv. 5; Titus i. 5. 


The Prophet in Administration 547 


In the course of the second century the prophetic ministry, as 
we have further seen, declined under the encroachments of the 
ministry of government. Already in the first quarter of the 
century, Ignatius, though claiming as for himself to speak im- 
mediately from God—“I got no intelligence from any man, but 
the Spirit proclaimed these words, Do nothing without the bish- 


op’”’—has not a syllable of indorsement for the prophets of his 


day. On the contrary, he makes the Christian’s duty consist in 
unquestioning obedience to the office-bearers of the Church. At 
the close of the century we find Irenzus urging obedience not to 
the prophet but to the presbyter in his office of both superin- 
tendency and teaching. “It is incumbent,’’ he insists, “to obey 
the presbyters who are in the Church,” “those who together with 
the episcopate have received a sure gift of truth, according to 
the good pleasure of the Father.” For without the peace of 
unity and order, how could there be hope of any large achieve- 
ment? And the chief office-bearer, the bishop, with his board 
of assistants, the presbyters, was the bond of this peace. They 
had the sufficient “gift of truth.” The man who came profess- 
ing to convey a message direct from God might prove a disturb- 
ing element in the community. Let him be restrained or put to 
silence for the good of the Cause. Such was the ecclesiastic 
argument and decision. 


2. PROTEST AGAINST THE SUPPRESSION OF PROPHECY. 


It was only after a vigorous and prolonged protest, however, 
that prophetism yielded its position. And its defeat was due 
not wholly to episcopal domination, but in large measure to 
its own inherent weaknesses. For the prophet, like the bishop, 
was imperfect in spiritual character; and the heavenly light of 
truth that was in him proved sometimes to be darkness. He 
might be the subject of more or less serious errors, vagaries, ex- 
cesses. 

This was conspicuously illustrated in Montanism, the organ- 


*To the Philadelphians, 7. 


548 Christianity as Organized 


ized form which the prophetic break with ecclesiasticism took in 
the second and third centuries. The Montanists, rejecting none 
of the generally received doctrines of Christianity, stood, on 
the contrary, as outspoken witnesses for two great New Testa-— 
ment principles: for the perpetual guidance of Christ’s people by 
the Spirit as given to them all without reference to official posi- 
tion, and for a godly church discipline. From these principles 
the institutional Christianity of the age was turning away more 
and more; and this downgrade movement the prophetic spirit 
strenuously resisted. But the teachings of Montanism, in which 
that spirit had chiefly found expression, were so severe toward 
the penitent backslider and so corrupted with superstitious be- 
liefs (if we may believe the accounts that have come down to 
us from its opponents) as to fail of their proper effect. Mon- 
tanus himself was a fanatic, professing to be the very Spirit of 
truth whom our Lord had promised, and to have come to usher 
in the last age of the Church. 
Possibly the voice of more enlightened witnesses might have 
been heeded, and Christendom saved from much externalism and 
priestly domination—none can tell. But Montanism failed. It 
was stigmatized as a heresy and a sect— 
that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried: 
“Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, 
Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave.” 
And after persisting through four hundred years, it was per- 
secuted out of existence by the Imperial government in alliance 
with the “Great,” or Catholic, Church. . 
But the loss resulting from the suppression of the two evan 
gelic principles for which this notable protest stood was irrepa 
rable. For ecclesiasticism had all things now in its own hands, 
and the result in due course of time was Romanism with the 
stereotyped dogmas of its teaching and ruling hierarchy. The 
prophet was slighted or forbidden, as an intruder: the priest 
claimed for himself every needed illumination and the absolute 
right to rule. Administration had become all; authority, the 
- substitute for truth; the rulers, the Church. 


F 


The Prophet in Administration 540 


3. THE CHRISTIAN PROPHET’s GIFT AND MESSAGES. 


The Christian prophet may or may not be a man of conspic- 
uous intellectual ability. He may or may not be an eloquent 
orator. He may either write or speak. The essential thing is 
that he shall live “as seeing Him who is invisible,” in personal 
communion with the Highest; and that he shall have the inner 
constraint and vocation to make known to others, so far as he 
himself may have received it, the mind of the Spirit. Let it 
not be supposed that he must needs have some new truth to 
tell. Even the Prophet of prophets came chiefly to fulfill. But 
that which has been declared from the beginning will always 
find in the prophet-preacher a new utterance and an instant ap- 
plication to existing conditions and needs. 

Brooding above every soul, like the visible sky overhead, are 
the heavens of eternal Truth and Righteousness. In any land, 
on any sea, wherever a human soul lives and moves, the light is 
ever falling from on high upon that soul. Otherwise moral life 
in its universal range would be impossible on earth. But what 
others may refuse to see or may see less clearly in this light of 
God, or may feel less keenly, or may hold as a creed of the intel- 
lect rather than a personal experience and law of daily life, be- 
comes on the prophet’s fire-touched lips a present and tremendous 
reality. 

What is the almighty Power by which the worlds were made? 
God is Spirit, answers the prophet, and is seeking men to wor- 
ship him in spirit and in truth. What is man, spirit or flesh? 
Man is essentially spiritual, in his innermost nature akin to the 
Creator, proclaims the prophet, and therefore to be governed in 
the whole of life by the law of the spirit and not by the im- 
pulses of the flesh. That in all ages is the word of the prophetic 
witness. That is to him the eternal Real of which his idealism, 
as men may call it, is the true though imperfect image. 

He will be a preacher of righteousness. Falsehood, dishon- 
esty, unrighteous means for the gaining of even righteous ends, 
whether practiced by the individual or by the community, will 


550 Christianity as Organized 


not interpret itself to him in terms of bright-witted expediency 
or pardonable weakness, but as sin against God. The conven- 
tional morality of the world will acquire no sanctity in his eyes 
because of its intrusion into the Church. Rather will it receive 
the heavier condemnation. He will weave no mesh of casuistry 
to blind his eyes withal. He will expose, not indeed without 
compassion and a painful sense of his own imperfections, the 
moral illusions and compromises of the heart. “And the hail 
will sweep away the refuge of lies.” Nor may he call any man 
master on earth, or submit the testimony of the conscience or 
the heart that beats with a pulse of fire within his own breast to 
any lower authority than that of the one Master who is in 
heaven. ’ 

But if the prophet’s vision be not too restricted, he will have 
another and a greater message to deliver. Concerning the love 
of God and his good pleasure which from eternity has been pur- 
posed in Christ, there will be given him some living and inter- 
pretative word. Such a message will come as a voice of salva- 
tion to the guilty conscience, will kindle a glory among the com- 
mon things of life, will make all righteous conduct an inspiration 
and a joy. For “of that light” of life also the prophet of this 
age of Christ and the Spirit is “sent to bear witness.” 

Which is the greater function, spiritual insight or ecclesiastical 
government, prophecy or administration? It is as if one should 
be asked to decide upon the relative merits of thought and the 
alphabet. It is a question of truth and form. It is to make com- 
parison between Christianity and its organization. To despise 
either would be madness; yet it by no means follows that the 
two should be classed together. “God hath set some in the 
Church, first Apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers :” after 
these are “helps,’’ ‘“governments.”* “It is not fit,” said the 
Eleven, “that we should forsake the word of God, and serve 
tables.’”” It is upon “the foundation of the apostles and proph- 
ets”—not of the deacons and presbyter-bishops—that the new 


11 Cor. xii. 28. 2Acts vi. 2. 


The Prophet in Administration Bet 


“Israel is built up as a holy temple in the Lord." Mary of Beth- 
_ any, illumined by the spirit of self-forgetting love for Christ, 
"was unconsciously a prophet—‘“‘she hath anointed My body be- 
' forehand for the burying:” Judas, treasurer of the Twelve, was 


an administrator. 

Or, going back to the great primal word of all, we have the 
Lord’s own explicit promise that upon the spiritually illumined 
soul, the confessing disciple, the witness-bearing prophet, as a 
foundation stone, he will build his ecclesia. Economic manage- 
ment is indeed an important means toward the achievement of 
the Church’s end; but to know and witness the revelation of the 
Father in Jesus Christ is to be the Church itself.’ 


4. FAULTS OF THE PROPHET. 


To-day, as heretofore, the Christian prophet can lay claim to 
no immunity from manifest human limitations and infirmities, 
or from besetting sins. His vision of truth at many points may 
be clouded. His lips may be closed in culpable silence for fear 
of offending some seat of authority or of losing the good will 
of friends. 

Or, what is here of more immediate significance, he may fail 
to appreciate the difficulties of administration. Thus he will 
grow impatient at the office-bearer’s slowness to give the whole 
truth the sanction of insistent positive authority within his juris- 
diction. For example, there may be an article in the accepted 
creed that does not fairly represent the most enlightened present 
judgment of the Church—a part of the doctrinal inheritance, 
let us suppose, from a certain great but not inerrant teacher, a 
Martin Luther, a John Calvin, or some other. “Substitute it 
at once,” cries the impatient prophet, “with a better.” But ad- 
ministrative wisdom will consider the whole effect which such 
a credal change would produce upon the minds of believers, 
and the best time and means for its accomplishment; and so 
may not be ready for immediate action. Or, there may be some 


*Eph. ii. 20, 21. *Matt. xvi..17, 18. 


602 Christianity as Organized 


feature of the Church’s economy that has apparently outlived it 
day of usefulness; admirably adapted perhaps to the circum- 
stances in which it originated, it does not so well suit presen 
conditions; therefore—“lay it promptly aside.” But those o: 
whom rests chiefly the responsibility of its abolition may ponder, 
Where then is the reasonable assurance of securing a better in 
its place? Or, to take still another instance, there are moral 
practices that are inconsistent with the counsels of perfection; 
the most enlightened consciences cannot follow them without 
grieving the Spirit of God; therefore—“let them be forbidden, 
and the Church purified from all evil-doers.” Yet the elders o 
the Church, in their watch-care over souls in all stages of spir- 
itual development, from the babes in Christ who in a sense are 
“yet carnal and walk as men” to the maturest saint with his 
clear-sighted moral judgment and faithful will, may see that 
some things should be temporarily permitted, though not ap- 
proved—‘“‘because of the hardness of your hearts.” Does the 
Apostle, who is both prophet and administrator, bid the brethren 
in Corinth exclude from church fellowship those who are “yet 
carnal and walk as men?” No; it would be like casting faulty 
little children out of the household. Does he also bid them re- 
tain in membership the incestuous man, as they seem disposed 
to do? On the contrary, he bids them put him out—to be re- 
admitted only on repentance. 

Assuredly it behooves Christ’s office-bearers to stand, as he 
stood, inflexible against all unrighteousness, and to do their 
official duty at whatever cost. But is it not also their duty to 
discriminate both between the lawful and the unlawful and be- 
tween the lawful and the inexpedient, and without a moment’s 
compromise of conscience so to administer the discipline and 
direct the appliances of the Church as to secure the greatest 
good of all? Their question will ever be: How may I best use 
“the authority which the Lord gave for building up, and not for 
casting down?” And the answer will not always be disclosed 
through a single flash of insight. Indeed, the idealistic solution 
of such practical questions will sometimes be liable to suspicion 


The Prophet in Administration ie 


because of its very quickness and simplicity. There is too little 
difficulty for the requirements of the task—‘“‘How is it that thou 
hast found it so soon, my son?” 


5. FAULTS OF THE ADMINISTRATOR. 


Equally grave are the faults of the administrator in the house 
of God. 

It is possible for him practically to rest in the Church as an 
end in itself, instead of conducting it as a means for realizing 
the Christianity which it represents. He finds it already estab- 
lished, an old and respectable institution. It provides for the 
religious nature of its membership, offers many social opportu- 
nities, brings congenial people together, serves as a mutual ben- 
eficiary association, places its ministers in an influential position 
and yields them a steady, if not an affluent, support. Therefore, 
let it be kept up under a prudent and conservative administra- 
tion, regularly resisting every troubler of its peace. It was in 
the spirit of their ancestral order, and not in that of the coming 
kingdom of God, that the priests in Jerusalem took their promi- 
nent part in sending the Prophet of prophets to crucifixion. 

As the mere politician has forgotten, if he ever knew, that 
his party has no right or reason to exist except for the sake of 
the government, so the mere ecclesiastic seems oblivious of the 
fact that the Church is only for the sake of the kingdom of God. 
The existing order, he thinks, must be maintained. All new 
aspects and accents of truth are regarded as presumably false; 
all new modes of publishing the Gospel, sensational; all new 
economic measures, superficial and impolitic. Should a John 
Wyclif, believing that “the sacred Scriptures are the property of 
the people, and one which no one should wrest from them,” 
translate these Scriptures into English for all Englishmen, let 
people be instructed that “it is a dangerous thing, as witnesseth 
blessed St. Jerome, to translate the text of Scripture out of one 
tongue into another.” Should an astronomer read the sky or a 
geologist the rocks or a biologist the forms of terrestrial life 
differently from the traditional reading of the Old Testament 


BoA Christianity as Organized 


Scriptures, let him be silenced or at least denounced without the 
honor of a respectful hearing. Should a Wesley preach to the 
ignorant multitude that they may know the forgiveness of sins 
by a divine witness within, he is at best a benevolent stirrer up 
of fanaticism throughout the land, and must be told by Bishop 
Joseph Butler that “belief in the immediate guidance of God’s 
Spirit is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.” Should laymen, 
like Robert Raikes, without ordination or theological training 
be moved to go forth and gather the neglected poor children 
into Sunday schools, it is an unwarrantable innovation which 
the archbishop of Canterbury must call a council to consider and 
oppose. Should a preacher of righteousness arise to waken the 
conscience of the Christian congregation by exposing the mam- 
mon worship not of the eighth century before the coming of 
Christ but of the twentieth century after; should he declare the 
just judgments of God concerning manufacturers and trades- 
men who for money’s sake keep blighting the young manhood 
of the land; should the “burden” of the oppressed who are not 
receiving their rightful inheritance in sunlight and air and t 
products of their labor in the world which God “has given to 
the children of men,” rest very heavy upon his spirit—he is bid- 
den to be discreet and “go slow.” Which indeed might be ac 
cepted as fairly good advice if it did not mean, being interpreted, 
“Be unfaithful, and do nothing at all.” Let the impracticable 
prophets and teachers be stoned with stones: no future genera- 
tion, it is thought, will ever take up these stones to build them 
into a monument. | 

Meanwhile perhaps the churches, under their respectable offi- 
cial leadership, do not go forward. All around them are large 
numbers of thoughtful, intelligent people and of thoughtless, un- 
intelligent people, of self-respecting poor people and of the ab- 
ject and enfeebled, whom they fail to interest or even to touch 
with a strong brother’s hand. Shall there be no well-planned, 
patient, and enthusiastic effort to reach the increasing multitude 
of the unchurched? Are the methods of the past necessarily the: 
best methods for present conditions? Shall it be assumed that 


The Prophet in Administration B58 


inside the churches, as now constituted, are included substantial- 
ly all persons who are susceptible of moral improvement or will- 
ing to be saved? Where is the yearning heart of love for the 


* lost ? 


It is quite possible for the churches of a community to show 
no sense of obligation to grapple with the problem of poverty. 
Or their voices may be mute and their hands idle in the pres- 
ence of notoriously prevalent forms of injustice. It is not an 
unheard-of state of things for them even to look with indiffer- 
ence upon the cause of the most imperative moral reform. They 
might make it successful. By vital united action they could 
bring to bear an effectual influence for the protection of the 
young from organized forms of vice, for the help of the poor 
and the incompetent, for temperance, for clean and wholesome 
living. If they seem but half-hearted about such things, is it 
that they have no mission from God concerning them? or is it 
not because the congregation of Jesus the Son of Man is some- 
how regarded, whether consciously or not, as an end in itself 
rather than a means for making visible and dominant the inner 
kingdom of righteousness ? 

Administration may also be too easily satishied with external 
success. The eyes of the prophet are continually fixed on the 
invisible. To him it is 


Better to walk the world unseen 
Than watch the hour’s event. 


With spiritual values only is he concerned—with things as they 
ought to be rather than as they are. But the very office of the 
administrator inclines him to overestimate things as they are— 
things that can be seen and counted. It is bitter to fail or to have 
people say that we have failed; and what is more assuring than 
to register a sort of success that may be known and applauded 
of all men? The Church is to increase, not decrease nor simply 
hold its own. The annual report must mark advancement. 
Hence numbers are emphasized rather than quality; ingather- 
ing, rather than edification; the raising of money and the erec- 


806 Christianity as Organized 


tion of church edifices, rather than growth in holiness. The 
divine order is reversed. Not professedly nor with full inten- 
tion, but nevertheless really the administrator becomes unwisely 
attentive to external prosperity. “And David’s heart smote hit 
after he had numbered the people; and David said, l 
have done very foolishly.” There is no arithmetic of the spir 
itual life. . 

Or, still again, there may be a selfish perversion of office, 
Love of power, like love of money, is a root of all kinds of evils. 
Yet even the ecclesiastical leader is sometimes justly chargeable 
therewith. Is he free from avarice? It is well; but if he be 
tainted with arrogance or ambition—“by that sin fell the an- 
gels.”” If he yield to the love of place, it will blind his spirit te 
the Christian ideal—“‘How can ye believe who receive glory one 
of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye 
seek not?” To cherish the passion for office is to kill the passion 
for souls. Yet it may be done even by one who, at the beginning 
of his career, was a true-hearted minister of Jesus Christ. 

The exercise of authority, the obedience of subordinates, the 
deference of the people may be sweeter than honey to his taste 
It may outvalue many thousands of money. Dreaming of these 
things through the years, he plans and labors and makes sacri 
fices for their attainment. If not directly, in numerous indirect 
ways instinctively recognized as efficacious, he seeks the good 
will of the governing powers and the suffrages of his brethren. 
It was the canny advice of the New Style Northern Farmer to 
his son: 


“Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is.” 


Not daring to ask for votes, the office-seeker may make himself 
as genial as possible and go where the voters are. . 


For as he reckoneth with himself, so is he: 
Eat and drink, saith he to thee; 
But his heart is not with thee. 


His hospitality spreads the table not for his guest but for him- 
self, 


The Prophet in Administration 557 


Thus ecclesiastical headship, instead of being accepted in gen- 
uine humility as a sacred trust, has been sought and retained for 
its emoluments, its honor, or its power. As purely secular and 


selfish as the motive of any aspirant for that “gilded perturba- 


tion” that sits upon the head of a king, is the motive with which 
some chief pastorate in the Church of Jesus may be wished for 
and won." 


6. No CONFLICT BETWEEN SPIRITUAL INSIGHT AND ApD- 
MINISTRATION. 


To conclude. The prophet as such cares for the idea, the 
spiritual and immutable truth. The administrator as such cares 
for the form, the organized institution. Are these two things, 
then, contrary the one to the other? So far from being con- 
trary, they are cooperant; for the ultimate aims of both are the 
same. Yet such is the wide difference between them that he 
whose calling occupies him with either one of the two may be 
deficient in knowledge and appreciation of the other. He must 
have acquaintance with both. Like soul and body, though great- 
ly differing, they are vitally related. The Christian pastor, whose 
ministry is to the soul, may fail through not giving due honor to 
the bodily organism. The physician, whose ministry is to the 
body, may fail through disregarding the soul. Similarly with 
truth and organization, principle and expediency, the gospel and 
government, prophet and administrator in the Church of Christ. 

So, therefore, when the grace of spiritual insight and the gift 
of administrative skill are united in the same person, then the 
question of true ecclesiastical oversight is solved. We are told 


1Probably it would be difficult to find more true-hearted and diligent 
Christian workers, as a body, than the preachers of the British Wesleyan 
Conference. Yet it is this Conference which at a recent session (1907) in 
City Road Chapel, London, was asked to consider the resolution: “That the 
pastoral session of this Conference expresses its abhorrence of the persist- 
ent canvassing for honors and positions in the Methodist Church; it deplores 
that the custom has become so prevalent in Conferences and Synods, and 
calls on all the brethren to do their utmost to put down a system so open 
to abuse.” 


558 Christianity as Organized 


that Frederick the Great was accustomed to say that if he de 
sired the ruin of a province he “would commit it to the govern 
ment of a philosopher.” A true enough saying, no doubt, if the 
brilliant and experienced monarch meant a mere closet philoso: 
pher. But it would be difficult to show that the philosophic mind 
is in itself other than a real qualification for the fine and difficul 
art of government. The ancient dream that in the Ideal Ree 
public philosophers only would be made kings, or that in the 
mythical Golden Age of China it was actually so, was not all 4 
dream. Let no other than a man who knows the things of th 
kingdom of heaven in his own heart be chosen for an adminis- 
trative position whose object is to make that kingdom a reality 
among men. 

Here, it need hardly be remarked, is no plea that “inefficient 
innocence” or wild-eyed fanaticism shall have the reins of goy- 
ernment intrusted to its hands, but that truth-seeking, conscience, 
the insight of moral love, spiritual healthfulness shall be en- 
throned, as the Maker of man intended. Surely every “king- 
dom” that is named among men should be a kingdom of right- 
eousness. Such is the will of the King of kings. And the 
Church of God, standing as it does for the very kingdom of 
heaven on earth—shall it not be a kingdom of righteousness, 
even of the righteousness which may be described most truly as 
holy love? 

But as a qualification for the fine discernment and faithful 
application of this righteousness there is needed the spirit of the 
prophet. “Ambrose alone,’’ said Theodosius the Great, “de- 
serves the title of bishop.” Why so? Because Ambrose, Bishop 
of Milan, in the spirit of a Nathan standing before the guilty 
King David, reproved the most powerful monarch of the age for 
an act of inhuman cruelty, thrust him back from the church door, 
and excluded him for the space of eight months from the fellow- 
ship of the congregation. “It is not easy,” said the humbled 
emperor, “to find a man capable of teaching me the truth.” But 
such an intrepid administrator of the truth had found him. 

Let the spiritual mind illumine the masterful understanding. 


The Prophet in Administration 559 


Let the statesman be a seer. Let the pilot “know the stars as 
well as the sea.’ Let the builder of church organizations be- 
long to the Pentecostal company who, in the light of the Spirit, 
see visions and dream dreams. Let the moral insight and the 
allied moral courage of the prophet nerve the hand of the ad- 
ministrator. 

Who was the lawgiver of Israel, founder of the common- 
wealth, the first great statesman and leader, perhaps the biggest- 
brained man of the very ancient world? A prophet. “By a 
prophet,” says Hosea, “Jehovah brought Israel up out of Egypt.” 
“There hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, 
whom Jehovah knew face to face.” 

Who was it that had the administrative wisdom to lead the 
people into a closer unity and an unprecedented prosperity, and 
to see them safely through the perilous transition from the rule 
of the judges to the establishment of the kingdom? It was 
Samuel the seer. It was the prophet-judge, the man whose heart 
was no less attentive to the voice of Jehovah than his hand was 
steady to administer the law and do the truth. “Speak, Lord, 
for thy servant heareth.” “Then the children of Israel did put 
away the Baalim and the Ashtaroth, and served Jehovah only.” 

Likewise, when the stalwart son of Kish was to be crowned 
as Israel’s first king, he was bidden by Samuel to go his way 
till he should meet a band of prophets coming down from a high 
place prophesying. “And the spirit of Jehovah will come might- 
ily upon thee,” said his inspired director, “and thou shalt proph- 
esy with them and shalt be turned into another man.” And as 
he went his way “God gave him another heart.” Asked in sur- 
prise the people who had known him before, “Is Saul also among 
the prophets?’”* It was even so; because he had been chosen to 
the office of king. Let it be shown in a surprising and remem- 
berable life-picture, at the very beginning of the monarchy, that 
back of the scepter of Israel’s ruler was to beat the heart of a 
prophet. It was an indispensable qualification for the ideal king. 


1Hosea xii. 13. 77 Sam. x. I-13. 


560 Christianity as Organized 


Yet such were Saul’s limitations, mental and moral, that no 
fullness or depth of the inward guiding light could abide with — 
him; and here lay the secret of his painful failure on the throne. 
Then arose the real father of the Hebrew monarchy, “founder 
of the kingdom of promise,” who with all his fearful faults— 
his sins and crimes—seems ever to have returned penitently as 
a learner to the feet of the All-Wise, and to say, “Jehovah will 
lighten my darkness.” For in the person of a gifted shepherd 
lad on the hills of Bethlehem the aged Samuel had now found 
potentially both the sweet singer of Israel and the master-hand 
of her royal government. Psalmist and sovereign were one. 
Such was the sublime ideal: not a priest-king offering sacrifices, 
but a prophet-king discerning the will of God and ruling the 
elect people with Heaven-taught wisdom. 


“Now these be the last words of David. 
The Rock of Israel spake to me: 
One that ruleth over men righteously, 
That ruleth in the fear of God, 
He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, 
A morning without clouds; 
When the tender grass springeth out of the earth, 
Through clear shining after rain.’ 


But is not this very same truth the New Testament teaching 
concerning vision and government, prophecy and administration, 
in the churches of Christ? We have taken note of the distinction 
between the ministry of government and the prophetic ministry; 
we have now to note the fact that in the beginning of Christian 
organization these two ministries were united in one and the 
same person. The Apostles, whom Jesus sent forth first of all 
as prophets—‘Behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men 
and scribes”*—-were administrators. And when it became ex- 
pedient for them to be relieved of certain administrative duties 
—such as the distribution of alms—the men to be chosen in 
their place must be “full of the Spirit” as well as of “wisdom.’”* 


12 Sam. xxiii. I, 3, 4. *Matt. xxiii. 34. Cf, ch, x. 41, 
5Acts iv. 34, 353 vi. 1-6 


The Prophet in Administration 561 


Prophets appear as chief men, leaders, rulers (whether strictly 
official or not)—both speaking the word of God and bearing 
rule over the congregation." Presbyters who, together with their 
' presidency of the churches, labored “in the word and in teach- 
ing’’ were to be doubly honored.* It was Timothy, an evan- 
gelist, charged with “handling aright the word of truth,” to 
whom was committed as a vice-apostle the temporary superin- 
tendency of the church in Ephesus.* It was prophets and teach- 
ers in Antioch who laid their hands upon two of their own num- 
ber, to send them away on a special mission to the nations.‘ 

And it is one of these same missionaries who unites henceforth 
the two functions most conspicuously in his own ministry: as a 
prophet, receiving visions and revelations from the Lord, and 
declaring the spirituality and inexorableness of the law, the ex- 
ceeding sinfulness of sin, the way of access to God, the unity 
of the Spirit, the unsearchable riches of Christ; as an adminis- 
trator, planning and opening the way for the universal exten- 
sion of organized Christianity, exercising discipline, ordaining 
elders, sending representatives to set things in order in places 
- where he could not be personally present. At one time we find 
him writing to the church in Corinth: “I know a man in Christ, 
. . . how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard 
unspeakable words.’’’ At another time he sends to the churches 
a plan for gathering money for the relief of the poor: “Now 
concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the 
churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the 
week let each of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that 
no collections be made when I come.’” 

A mystic, was he? Truly a matchless mystic, if to call this 
man by such a name means that, through the divine life in his 
own spirit, he discerned intuitively the things of the Spirit of 
God. And he was all the more competent lifter of a collection 


2Acts xv. 22, 32; Heb. xiii. 7. *Acts xiii. I-3. 
Ta Alay oe 2: Gor. xi15 2-4. 
*7 Tim. i. 3; 2 Tim, ii. 15. *r Cor, xvi. 2, 3. 


36 


562 Christianity as Organized 


for the poor and director of the external affairs of the churches 
because of that spiritual discernment. For the heavenly things 
interpret the earthly and show the eternal relations of even the 
lowliest and most external duty. It is by the light of the re- 
splendent sun, millions and millions of miles away, that men 
walk on their own little planet; and it is those who “‘walk in the 
light as God is in the light”? that may expect to see clearly, so 
as to organize wisely, all service for Christ and his kingdom, 
Except in that light, how can they even know Christ and his 
kingdom, for whose sake the Church is to do whatever she does? 

One can imagine an acceptable priest under the Old Covenant 
pursuing his round of daily duties without the inner teaching of 
the Spirit: one cannot imagine an office-bearer of an apostolic — 
congregation fulfilling his office without such teaching. 

Nor can it be asserted that the New Testament idea is prac- 
tically lost and forgotten. Its witness has been wrought into the 
economy of all evangelical churches; for it is the minister of 
the gospel who is chosen as best fitted for the office of admin- 
istration. The double qualification is sought, the grace of spir- 
itual truth and the gift to create or maintain institutions. Proph- 
et-rulers, preachers-in-charge, are appointed. Because not less 
manifest now than ever in Israel or ever in the first Christian 
century is the need of the heavenly vision to the man on whom 
shall rest the organizing and governmental care of the churches. 
“O Thou Eternal One, I must go up to the Mount ere I give 
laws to the people.” 

Is the double need of grace and gift sometimes fulfilled in 
power—as in the case of the strong “practical mystics,” a Wes- 
ley, a Chalmers, a Fliedner, a Hudson Taylor, a Dwight L. 
Moody, a Hugh Price Hughes? Then may be heard the note of 
progress in the building of the Church. Then indeed will that 
kingdom of love and of law in which Jesus Christ bears the scep- 
ter show signs of its presence and its coming. 


INDEX. 


Acotyte, the, functions of, 177. 

Administrator, the, must have spirit- 
ual insight, 546, 557-562; may rest 
in the Church as an end, 553-555; 
may be satisfied with external suc- 


313; the truly apostolic, 313, 314; 
rejected 'by the Reformers, 412, 
413; its history in the Church of 
England, 413-417; its affinity with 
sacerdotalism, 418, 4109. 


cess, 555, 556; may pervert his of- Aquinas, Thomas, 46, 48, 346. 
fice, 556. Archbishop, the, origin of his office, 


Ambrose of Milan, 558. 


315, 316. 


American Episcopal Methodism, its Archdeacon, the, origin and devel- 


early connectionalism, 493, 494; its 


opment of, 171-173. 


government under Wesley, 494-497; Archpresbyter, the, origin and func- 


its sacramental question, 497-500; 
its superintendency, 500-502; its or- 


tions of, 222, 223; rural, 223; a 
present familiar type of, 223, 234. 


ganization into a church, 502; its Aristotle, 60. 
assertion of autonomy, 502-505; Arius, 364. 
origin of its presiding eldership, Asbury, Francis, 313, 412, 423, 404, 


505, 500; its General Conferences, 


500, 501, 502. 


506, 507; its lay representation, Athanasius, 171. 

507-509; its bishops’ powers, 510; Attila the Hun, 337. 

its episcopal office, or “order,” Augustine of Canterbury, 253. 
511-513; its bishops’ limitations, Augustine of Hippo, 324, 326, 335, 


513, 514; its adaptiveness, 515, 516; 


3406. 


its ministerial character, 516, 517; Authority, as degraded in Roman- 


its utilization of lay workers, 517; 
its unity, 517; its organized ag- 
gressiveness, 518; its defects and 
perils, 518-520. 

Apostolic Succession, two views of, 
274-277; its history in the Church 
of England, 277-281, 414-417; 
Scripture argument for, 281-286; 
not known in sub-apostolic age, 
286-288; when first taught, 289; 


ism, 96-100; as exemplified in 
Protestantism, 104-106; for edifica- 
tion, 203; may be nonoffcial, 203, 
204; in heaven and earth, 204, 205; 
strained views of, 235-237; instinc- 
tively acknowledged, 396; as taught 
in New Testament, 306, 397; il- 
lustrated in Presbyterianism, 397, 


308. 


why no early testimony for, 289; Bacon, Francis, 416. 
290; a Roman idea, 291; its as- Bancroft, Bishop Richard, 416. 
sumptions, 293, 294; a violation of | Baptist Churches, the, rise and prog- 


all analogies, 297-300; not sus- 
tained by experience, 300, 301; 
practical test of, 301-304; the truly 


ress of, 386, 387; rules and princi- 
ples of, 387-389; the Lord’s Sup- 
per in, 380. 


divine, 309, 310; the truly ecclesi- Barrowism, a form of Congregation- 


astical, 310-312; the truly evangelic, 


alism, 379. 


312, 313; the truly charismatic, Basil the Great, 78. 


(5652, 


566 


Bede the Venerable, 85. 

Benedict, the Rule of, 79, 80. 

Beneficence, shown in the ministry of 
Jesus, 151; shown in the apostolic 
age, 152-154; to be practiced with 
wisdom, 154, 155. 

Bernard of Clairvaux, 50, 207. 

Beza, Theodore, 413. 

Bishop, the, as presiding presbyter, 
218-221; as guarantor of true doc- 
trine, 238-240; his personal quali- 
fications, 256, 257; as a civil and 
military officer, 257; has often been 
worldly, 294-297. 

Boardman, Richard, 494. 

Bohm, Martin, 490, 491. 

Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, 
84, 253. 

Booth, “General” William, 422. 

Bossuet, 171. 

Brewster, William, 380. 

Brotherhood, as related to organiza- 
tion, 3, 4. 

Browne, Robert, 193, 377, 378, 533- 

Bucer, Martin, 413. 

Bulgaris Eugenios, 79. 

Bunyan, 349, 389. 

Burke, Edmund, 58. 

Butler, Bishop Joseph, 554. 


CALVIN, 52, 224, 225, 226, 398, 399, 
400, 407, 413, 551. 

Cardinal, office of, 453, 454. 

Cartwright, Thomas, 278, 280. 

Celibacy in the Roman priesthood, 
458, 450. 

Chalmers, Thomas, 195, 562. 

Charlemagne, 253, 479. 

Christ, as the unifying truth, 4, 5, 10; 
power in personality of, 5, 6; as 
the revelation of spiritual truth, 6, 
7; as the holy one, 7; as master of 
the spirit, 8; as the spiritual ideal, 
8, 9; as the atoning Saviour, 9, Io. 

Chrysostom, 183. 

Church, the, as a brotherhood organ- 
ized, 3, 4; as a Christian life so- 


Christianity as Organized 


ciety, 24; earlier conditions of mem. 
bership in, 24-26; present condi- 
tions of membership in, 28-30; or- 
ganization not essential to, 148; 
congregational liberties of, 148, 149; 
beneficence of, 150-155; not dis- 
tinctively for the relief of the 
poor, 155, 156; its justification ir 
spiritual need, 156, 157. 
Church and State, under the medie- 
val papacy, 344, 345; under the 
reign of Constantine, 361-366; re- 
lations of, 373; in England and 
Russia, 435, 448. 
Church of England, the, a clergy- 


institutions, 422; its extension 
America, 422-424; its relation te 
the Eastern and the Roman Church, 
432-434. 
Clement of Alexandria, 264. 
Clement of Rome, 39, 132, 231. 
Coke, Bishop Thomas, 500, 502. 
Coleridge, 6. 
Columbus, 479. } 
Confessional, origin of, 44, 45. 
Confirmation, origin of, 255, 256. __ 
Congregational churches, the, thei 
fundamental idea, 374; their origin 


gland, 377-380; their American his- 
tory, 380-383; their principles ane 
rules, 383-385; 


right, 528-534. 
Constantine the Great, 50, 361, 362 


363, 364, 479. ] 
Councils, use of Jewish, 210; uni- 


congregational, 354-358; diocesan 
358; provincial ante-Nicene fn 


Index 567 


subsequent to the first, 366; com- 
posed of bishops only, 366; their 
dependence on the emperor, 367- 
369; their doctrinal authority in 
Roman and Evangelical churches, 
360, 370; ecumenical, in Eastern 
Church, 438, 430. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 379. 

Cyprian, 42, 137, 162, 207, 242, 243; 
244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 
306, 307, 315, 322, 325, 326, 328. 

Cyrus the Great, 340. 


Deaconess, the, rise of her office, 182; 
in the 4th century, 183, 184; must 
not be confounded with the 
“widow,” 184-186; her primitive 
duties, 186, 187; her ordination, 
187, 188; causes of her decline, 188, 
189; in what respects different 
from the “sister,” 192, 193; renewal 
of her office in the earlier Protes- 
tant churches, 193, 194; revival of 
her office at Kaiserwerth-on-the- 
Rhine, 194-197; in the Evangelical 
churches of to-day, 198, 199; esti- 
mate of her office, as to its central 
idea, 190, its Scripture precedents, 
199-201, its economic aim, 201, 202, 
its fruits, 202. 

Democracy in church government, 
its excellences, 390-392; its limita- 
tions and dangers, 392-395. 

Descartes, 103, 104. 

Diaconate, the, characteristic of 
Christianity, 150; meaning of the 
word, 158; duties of the office in 
apostolic age, 158-162; duties in the 
post-apostolic age, 162, 163; why 
such high qualifications for the of- 
fice, 163-166; in conduct of wor- 
ship, 168, 169; in ministration to 
the poor, 169, 170; in administra- 
tion of discipline, 170, 171; an office 
of advisers and deputies, 171; a 
stepping stone to the presbyterate, 
173, 174; retrogressive changes in, 


174, 175; in the present age, 175, 
176; in the Church of England, 305. 
Diocese, the bishop’s, its origin in 
the city, 251, 252; its origin in the 
country, 252, 253; its origin in 
Gaul and Spain, 253; its origin in 
England and Germany, 253, 254. 

Dionysius the Areopagite, 2009. 

“Disciples of Christ,” the, origin and 
principles of, 380, 300. 

Discipline, formative and personal, 
32, 33; formative and official, 33; 
corrective and personal, 33, 34; 
corrective and official, 34; as taught 
by Christ, 34-37; as exemplified by 
Paul, 37, 38; in  post-apostolic 
times, 39; in the case of back- 
sliders, 40-43; in medieval times, 
43-49; as administered to heretics, 
50, 51; Calvinian, 52; as a motive 
of Independency, 52, 53, 375, 376; 
as illustrated in Methodism, 53-55; 
laxity of, 55, 56; difficulties of, 56, 
57; true intent of, 57, 58. 

Divine right in church government, 
as a question, 521, 522; two views 
of, 522; what makes its idea at- 
tractive, 523-525; presumptions in 
its favor, 525-528; as claimed for 
Congregationalism, 528-534, for 
Presbyterianism, 534-538, for prel- 
acy, 539-541, for papacy, 541-543; 
when a vital question, 543; when 
a true idea, 544. 

Dominic, 85, 88. 

Doorkeeper, the, in the early Church, 
181. 


Emepury, PHILIP, 493. 

Emmons, Nathaniel, 381. 

English Wesleyan Methodism, its 
beginnings, 478; origin of its 
itinerancy, 479, 480, its class leaders, 
480, 481, its Conference, 481, 482; 
as the United Society, 482, 483; as 
a church, 483, 484; its forms of gov- 
ernment, 484-486, 


668 


Episcopate, the, beginnings of, 232, 
233; completer development of, 233- 
237; significance of Ignatius’ view 
of, 236; as the depository of apos- 
tolic doctrine, 237-240; responsible 
to God only, 242, 243; a bond of 
unity, 243, 244, 249, 250, 306-309; 
an immediate gift from God, 246, 
247; a priesthood, 247, 248; sup- 
posed to have originated in the 
presbyterate, 258-264; supposed to 
have been originally different from 
the presbyterate, 265-268; supposed 
to have originated at the Lord’s 
Supper, 268-270; supposed to have 
originated through apostolic suc- 
cession, 273; as a center of unity, 
306-309; its inevitableness, 409; 
its prototype, 410; as illustrated in 
civil government, 411; the apostolic 
and the sacerdotal idea of, 411, 
412; its abuses not inevitable, 462; 
its origin and character in the 
Evangelical Lutheran Church, 463- 
466; in the Moravian Church, 470, 
473, 476; in the Canadian Church, 
487; in the Methodist Protestant 
Church, 487; in the Methodist 
Church of Japan, 487, 488; an out- 
come of evangelism, 488, 480. 

Evangelical Lutheran Church, the, 
in Europe, 463-466; in America, 
466-469. 

Exorcist, functions of, 178, 179; real 
significance of, 179, 180. 

Experience, a method of philosophy 
and theology, 102-104. 


FELLOWSHIP, a mark of Christianity, 
17, 18; in the teaching of Jesus, 
19; in the teaching of the Apostles, 
20; in Christian Jews and Gen- 
tiles, 20, 21; as a formative force 
in the Church, 23; as organized, 
58-62. 

Fenelon, 50. 

Fletcher of Madeley, sor. 


Cc hristianity as Organized 


Fliedner, Theodor, 194, 196, 562. 

Formative Ideas, 545, 546. 

Francis of Assisi, 85, 86, 504. 

Franciscans, as educators, 85; as 
missionaries, 86, 87; Third Order 
of, 87. 

Fry, Elisabeth, 195. 


Grpgons, ARCHBISHOP, 098. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, 432. 

Gore, Bishop Charles, 280, 5309. 

Goulbourn, Dean E. M., 308. 

Green, Richard, 431. 

Gregory the Great, 216, 320, 330, 
331, 332, 338. 


Hatt, Rosert, 389. 

Harnack, Dr. Adolph, 266, 260. 
Hatch, Dr. Edwin, 265, 266, 268, 280. 
Henry VIII., 362, 413. 

Hermas, 399. 

Hilary of Arles, 326. 
Hildebrand, 171, 292, 295, 338, 344. — 
Hippolytus, 289. 

Hodge, Charles, 536. 
Hohenzollerns, the, 246. 
Honorius, the Emperor, 78. 
Hooker, Richard, 204, 208, 424. 
Hiibmaier, Balthasar, 386. 
Hughes, Hugh Price, 201, 562. 
Hypatia, 88. 


Icnatius or ANTIOCH, 182, 233, 234, 
235, 238, 241, 242, 243, 250, 287, 
288, 2890, 307, 547. ( 

Imperialism repressive of individual- 
ism, 68, 69; a formative idea of the 
Church of Rome, 292. 

Individualism, developed by fellow- 
ship, 64-67; in the teaching of 
Jesus, 65, 66; why repressed in 
early Church, 68-71; demands 
liberty, 90, 91; as developed by 
Protestantism, 91-93, 100, 101; as 
repressed in the Roman Catholic 
Reaction, 94; as repressed by the 
Roman hierarchy, 98, 99; its dan- 


> 


Index 


Gers, 90, 100; its abuse in Protes- 
tantism, IOI, 102. 

Indulgences, development of, 47-49. 

Innocent I., 324. 

Institutionalism, in Episcopal 
Churches, 429, 430; sacerdotal, 430, 
431. 

Intention, sacerdotal, required in the 
Roman Church, 298; not required 
in the Anglican Church, 298-300. 

frenzeus, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 250, 
263, 264, 287, 307, 357. 

(van the Terrible, 447. 


JEROME, SopHRONIUS EvuseEstius, 80, 
87, 110, 162, 262, 260, 273. 

Jesuitism, origin of, 94, 95; Fourth 
Vow of, 96, 97; activity and crimes 
of, 97, 98. 

John the Faster, 320, 331. 

Julian the Emperor, 154. 

Justin Martyr, 180, 232, 273, 300. 


Kewier, HELEN, 297. 
Knox, John, 332, 413. 


Laity, the ecclesiastical idea of, 138, 
139; their loss of rights, 139-141; 
in the Church of Rome, 141; in 
Protestantism, 147. 

Laud, Archbishop, 412, 416. 

Leo the Great, 171, 324, 325, 327, 329, 
332, 337, 412. 

Lightfoot, Bishop J. B., 260. 

Lord’s Supper, the, a means of fel- 
lowship, 50, 60; its form of cele- 
bration, 132, 133; its place in wor- 
ship and service, 169, 170; the pres- 
idency of, 220; its significance in 
the development of the episcopate, 
271-273. 

Louise le Gras, Madame, 190. 


_ Love, as a response, I0, II; aS ex- 


pressed in emotion, I1; as expressed 
in will, 12; lack of in the Church, 
14; as illustrated in patriotism, 15, 
16; as the qualifying heart of 


569 


gifts, 126; as related to rights, 508, 
509; as the builder of the Church, 
544. 

Loyola, Ignatius, 95, 96, 97. 

Luther, 93, 102, 103, 104, 224, 225, 
369, 398, 479, 551. 


MATHER, ALEXANDER, 483. 
McConnell, Dr. S. D., 423. 
Melanchthon, 50. 

Menno Simons, 386. 

Mills, Samuel John, 385. 

Milton, 225, 401, 535. 

Ministry, the, charismatic, 113-116; 
a greater and a less, 115, 116; of 
government, 116-118; a greater and 
a less, 118; as representative, 118- 
124; as divinely appointed, 124-126; 
as a means of service, 1260-129; in 
the sub-apostolic age, I3I, 132; 
sharply separated from the people 
through leaning on constituted au- 
thority, 132, through the form of 
the Lord’s Supper, 132, 133, 
through money, 133-135, through 
privileges, 135, 136, through monas- 
ticism, 136, 137, through sacerdotal- 
ism, 137. 

Monastery, the, its origin and mo- 
tives, 73-76; its social develop- 
ment, 76-78; its freedom, 77, 78; 
how regulated, 78-82; in the East, 
79; as related to the priesthood, 
82; as related to the episcopate and 
the papacy, 83, 84; the learning of, 
84, 85; the missionary zeal of, 85, 
86; decline of, 87-89; in the present 
day, 89; tended to separate minis- 
ter from people, 136, 137. 

Montanism, councils for the suppres- 
sion of, 355, 350; faults and fail- 
ure of, 547, 548. 

Montanus, 548. 

Moody, D. L., 392, 562. 

Moravian Church, the, as the “an- 
cient church,” 469-471; as the “hid- 
den seed,” 471, 472; as the resusci- 


57° 


tated church, 472, 473; its exclu- 
sive settlements, 473-475; its mis- 


sionary activity, 473, 474, 475; its 
laws and regulations, 476, 477. 


NeEtson, JoHN, 480. 

Newman, Cardinal J. H., 99, 332, 307, 
439. 

Nicholas II., Czar, 447. 

Nightingale, Florence, 198. 

Novatian, 254. 


Orvers, Holy and Minor, 181; in the 
Methodist episcopacy, 511-513. 

Ordination, evangelic and sacerdotal 
idea of, 141-143; confers no special 
power, 149; an episcopal function, 
254, 255; Timothy’s, 284-286; phys- 
ical touch of, 297, 208. 

Organization, as a divine idea, 109- 
III; its beginnings *n the church 
in Jerusalem, 111, 112; its forms in 
the earlier apostolic time, 113-116; 
its forms in the later apostolic 
time, 116-118; its necessary devel- 
opment, 143; its perverted develop- 
ment, 143, 144; its need of divine 
guidance, 144-146; not confined to 
ministerial offices, 149. 

Origen, 182. 

Orthodox Eastern Church, the, its 
patriarchal government, 436-439; 
orthodoxy its predominant note, 
439-441; as to reunion with Rome, 
440, 441; its forms of government, 
441-443; its church music, 443; its 
pictures, images, and worship, 443, 


444. 
Otterbein, Philip William, 489, 490, 
401. 


Parmer, Ray, 207. 

Papacy, the, an outcome of the Cyp- 
rianic episcopate, 291, 292; its 
origin, 323, 324; early monarchic 
acts of, 324-326; compared with the 
Cyprianic system, 327, 328; in Mid- 


Christianity as Organized 


dle Ages, 329-331; reverses the of 
der of historic facts, 331; its usur 
pations, 331, 332; not catholic, 333 
Constantinople’s relation to, 3 


its opportunity in the West, 33: 
338; question as to its Christias 
character, 338-344; its claim 


its claim of infallibility, 345-34 
its dream of unity, 347-349; its e 
clesiastic and theologic author 
452, 453; not a higher order thar 
the priesthood, 457, 458; its au 
dacity, 460; through what force 
developed, 461; its argument fo! 
divine rights, 541-543. 4 

Parish, the, development of, 71-73. 

Patriarchate, the, its origin, 316, 317: 
preéminence of the Roman, 317- 
322; in the Orthodox Easter 
Church, 436-438. 

Penance, public, 42, 43; private, 43, 
44; substitutional, 46. 

Peter the Great, 362, 447. 

Pius IIL, 95. 

Pius 1X., 89, 346, 347. 

Pius X., 98, 141. 

Pliny the Younger, 183. 

Polycarp, 163, 231, 232, 230, 267. 

Polycrates, 327. 

Pothinus the Martyr, 120. 

Prelacy, its fundamental idea, 400; 
its relation to the English monar- 
chy, 413, 414; a theory of diocesan 
government only, 435, 436; its ar- 
gument for divine right, 539-541. 

Presbyterate, the, as an extension of 
parenthood, 205, 206; ancient exam: 
ples of, 206, 207; a fatherly office 
208, 209; in ancient Israel, 209, 210; 
in New Testament times, 210-2! 2; 
not to be confounded with ruler- 
ship of the synagogue, 211; in the 
apostolic churches, 212, 213; its 
functions, 214, 215; in the sub- 
apostolic age, 215, 216; Christian 


Index 


formative idea of, 216-218; per- 
verted into priesthood, 221, 222; as 
affected by the Reformation, 224- 
227; in present-day Protestant 
churches, 227; gave rise to the epis- 
copate, 258-264; in the Church of 
England, 305. 

Presbyterianism as a form of church 
government, in Geneva, 398-401; 
in the United States, 401-404; its 
fundamental principles, 404; its 
view of the continuity of the 
Church, 404, 405; its view of infant 
church membership, 405, 406; its 
courts in gradation, 406; its catho- 
licity, 406; its strength and weak- 
ness, 406-408; its idea of divine 
right, 534-538. 

Prophet in administration, the, in 
Israel, 546; in the apostolic period, 
546; in the 2d century, 547; his 
suppression, 547, 548; his gift and 
messages, 540, 550; his greatness, 
550, 551; his faults, 551-553. 

Protestant Episcopal Church, the, or- 
ganization of, 424, 425; as com- 
pared with the English Church, 
425-427; its forms of government, 
428, 429; its ecclesiastic isolation, 
431-434. 

Provoost, Bishop Samuel, 425. 

Puritan, the, his individualism, t1o2. 


Rakes, ROBERT, 194, 554. 

Rankin, Thomas, 494, 500. 

Reader, the, needed in the early 
Church, 180, 181. 

Reformed Episcopal Church, the, its 
episcopacy, 492. 

Reichard, Gertrude, 196. 

Robinson, Pastor John, 379, 380, 534. 

Roman Catholic Church, the, its laws 
and regulations, 454-457. 

Russo-Greek Church, the, its origin, 
444-447; its subjection to the Czar, 
447-449; its forms of government, 
449, 450; its clergy, 450, 451; its 


571 


use of the Scriptures, 451; its idola- 
try, 451, 452. 


SACERDOTALISM, repressive of person- 
ality, 69, 70; changed ministry into 
hierarchy, 137. 

Schaif, Dr. Philip, 323, 308. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 280. 

Seabury, Bishop Samuel, 425. 

Self-love, the rightness of, 12, 13; 
the lessening consciousness of, 
ie 

Service, promotive of fellowship, 62, 
63; the idea of all office, 126-129; 
exemplified in the life of Jesus, 151; 
exemplified in medical missions, 
167. 

Simon Stylites, 86. 

Siricius, Pope, 324. 

Sisterhoods, 192. 

Sisters of Charity, their origin, 180, 
190; their rule of life, 190, Io1. 
Social dependence, in worship, 21, 

22; in work, 22. 

Spurgeon, C. H., 380. 

Stephen of Rome, 243, 324. 

Strawbridge, Robert, 4093. 

Sub-deacon, the, duties of, 176, 177. 

Synagogue, the, worship in, 218. 


Taytor, Hupson, 562. 

Telemachus the Monk, 78. 

Tertullian, 61, 178, 182, 264, 326, 327, 
335. 

Theodore of Canterbury, 254. 

Theodosius the Great, 558. 

Thornwell, John H., 536. 


In Currst, their 
their forms of 


Unitep BRETHREN 
origin, 489-492; 
government, 492. 

Unity as a Divine idea, 228, 229; in 
societies, 229, 230; in a local 
church, 230; its development in 
apostolic and_ sub-apostolic 
churches, 230-232; doctrinal stand- 
ard of, 238-240; papal dream of, 


572 Christianity as Organized 


347, 348; as represented by coun- 
cils, <350)) 35%. 


VALENTINIAN III., 326. 
Victor I., 324, 327. 

Vincent de Paul, 189, 190, Igor. 
Vladimir, Grand Prince, 446. 


WASHINGTON, 479. 
Webb, Captain Thomas, 493. 
Wesley, Charles, 297. 


epee 


Wesley, John, 17, 90, 332, 342, 
479, 480, 481, 482, 483, 494, 
496, 499, 500, 501, 502, 504, ss). 

Wesley, Susanna, 396. 

Whately, Archbishop, 280, 294, 305, 

White, Bishop William, 424, 425. 

Whitgift, Archbishop of Conte ry 
278, 280. 

Williams, Roger, 387. 

Wise, John, 381. 

Wyclif, John, 553. 


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